LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


HERBERT   SPENCER 


- 


HERBERT  SPENCER. 


PIONEERS    IK    EDUCATION 

HERBERT  SPENCER 

AND   SCIENTIFIC  EDUCATION 

BY 

GABRIEL  COMPAYRE 

CORRESPONDENT  OP  THE  INSTITUTE  ;  DIRECTOR  OF  THE  ACADEMT 

OF  LYONS;    AUTHOR  OP   "PSYCHOLOGY  APPLIED   TO 

EDUCATION,"  "LECTURES  ON  PEDAGOGY," 

**  A  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY,"  ETC. 


TRANSLATED  BY 
MARIA   E.    FINDLAY 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  CO. 
PUBLISHERS 


LB  • 


COPYRIGHT,  190T, 
BY  THOMAS  Y.  CEO  WELL  «fe  COMPANY. 


PUBLISHED,  S«PTKMB«B,  1907. 


CONTENTS  AND   SUMMAKT 

PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

I.  The  question  whether  it  is  necessary  to  be  a  professional 

to  write  on  education.  —  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  merely 
a  theorist.  —  Success  of  his  book,  especially  in  France. 

—  Place  of  education  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  — 
The  System  of  Synthetic  Philosophy.  —  Spencer's  life.  — 
A  half-century  of  hard  work.  —  Crises  of  illness.  — 
Germs  of  his  future  vocation.  —  Family  influences.  — 
Precocious  taste   for   natural   history.  —  Predilection 
for  moral  questions.  —  Spencer's  mode  of  thought.  — 
Extraordinary  extent  of  his  information.  —  Tendency 
to  generalize.  —  Opinions  of  Darwin  and  Stuart  Mill.  — 
Scientific  inspiration  of  the  essay  on  Education.  — 
Brilliant  qualities  of  style 1 

II.  Supremacy  of  the  sciences  in  education.  —  The  story 
of  Cendrillon.  —  The  quarrel  between  the  ancients  and 
the    moderns.  —  Lamartine    and    Arago.  —  Hamilton 
and  Whewell.  —  Perfection  is  of  this  world.  —  The  per- 
fect life. — Education  a  preparation  for  the  perfect  life. 

—  The  "full"  man.  —  Classification  of  the  essential 
forms  of  activity.  —  Preservation  of  one's  person  and 
health.  —  Acquisition  of  material  things.  —  Duties  of 
the  head  of  a  family.  —  Duties  of  the  citizen.  —  ^Es- 
thetic activity.  —  How  the  various  sciences  are  neces- 
sary to  direct  the  various  functions  of  life.  —  Educa- 
tion  of  mankind   forgotten.  —  The   physical   sins.  — 
Professional  instruction.  —  Objections  and  criticisms. 

—  Modern   education   an   education   of    celibates.  — 

iii 


iv  CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 

PAGE 

Criticism  of  teaching  of  history.  —  Descriptive  soci- 
ology. —  Literature  and  the  fine  arts  relegated  to  the 
last  place.  —  The  poet  should  be  a  man  of  learning.  — 
Is  science  "educative"  rather  than  " instructive " ?  — 
Training  of  the  memory.  —  Dangers  of  every  exclusive 
study.  —  All-round  education,  or  education  purely 
scientific.  —  Mr.  Spencer's  hesitations  .  *  .19 

III.  Intellectual  education.  —  Relationship  between  social 
states  and  systems  of  education.  —  Tendency  to  prefer 
the  pleasurable  to  the  useful.  —  Criticism  of  the  study 
of  living  and  of  dead  languages.  —  New  tendencies.  — 
Return  to  nature.  —  Science  and  nature.  —  Leading 
principles   of   intellectual   education.  —  Passage  from 
the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  concrete  to  the  ab- 
stract, etc.  —  The  development  of  the  race  and  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual.  —  Spontaneous  activity. 
—  Attractive  instruction.  —  Application  of  these  prin- 
ciples. —  Object   lessons.  —  Drawing.  —  Early  educa- 
tion        51 

IV.  Physical  education.  —  Position  of  honour  accorded  it 
in  England.  —  Parents  there,  however,  devote  more 
care  to  the  bringing  up  of  animals  than  to  the  educa- 
tion of  children.  —  Feeding.  —  It  4s  necessary  to  be 
well  nourished.  —  Practices  regarding  food.  —  Sweet- 
meats. —  Fruits.  —  Question    of    clothing.  —  Caprices 
of   fashion.  —  Physical   exercises.  —  How   they   have 
been  wrongfully  neglected  in  the  education  of  girls.  — 
Superiority  of  the  free  games  over  gymnastic  exer- 
cises. —  Mental    overstrain.  —  Physical    overstrain.  — 
Football    condemned.  —  Mr.    Spencer's    criticisms    of 
American  customs.  —  Muscular  strength  assigned  its 
proper  place.  —  Campaign  against   militarism.  —  Ne- 
cessity of    maintaining  an  equilibrium  between  the 
faculties  67 


CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY  v 

PAGE 

V.  Moral  education.  —  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  believe  in  the 

efficacy  of  science  to  moralize  mankind.  —  Outline  of 
his  moral  system.  —  Utilitarian  morality.  —  Happiness 
the  ultimate  aim  of  life.  —  Moral  progress  a  necessity. 

—  Altruistic  tendencies  are  becoming  little  by  little  as 
powerful  as  the  egoistic.  —  Moral  intuitions.  —  Does 
the  moral  sense,  a  product  by  means  of  heredity  of  the 
"experiences  of  utility"  consolidated  from  age  to  age, 
deliver  a  lesson  on  useless  morality  ?  —  Why  we  do  not 
admit  this,  especially  if  morality  consists  particularly 
in  seeking  happiness.  —  Wavering  of  Mr.  Spencer  over 
the  question  of  the  goodness  or  the  badness  of  children's 
instincts.  —  Moral  discipline.  —  The  natural  reactions. 

—  Criticism  of  this  system.  —  The  natural  reactions  are 
not  always  efficacious,  neither  soft  nor  just.  —  They  are 
sometimes  tardy.  —  Necessity  for  the  intervention  of 
parents  or  masters  in  discipline 86 

VI.  Wherein  Mr.  Spencer's  essay  is  chiefly  found  wanting.  — 
A  certain  lack  of  originality.  —  Inspiration  of  Rousseau 
always  present. — Especial  stress  placed  on  ideas  already 
known.  —  The  personal  accent  in  the  essay  on  Educa- 
tion. —  Philosophical  spirit.  —  Psychology  and  peda- 
gogy- —  The  philosophical  spirit  calls  for  the  spirit  of 
freedom.  —  Mr.  Spencer  is  a  liberal  and  an  individualist. 

—  His  opinion  concerning  Socialism.  —  The  equality  of 
the  sexes.  —  Why  women  should  be  given  the  same 
liberty  as  men.  —  Why  they  should  not,  however,  par- 
ticipate in  political  rights.  —  Spirit  of  gentleness  and 
humanity.  —  Inhuman  hardness,  nevertheless,  toward 
the  unfortunate  in  life.  —  War  on  asceticism.  —  Kindly 
morality.  —  Religious  spirit.  —  A  mysterious  univer- 
sal  and   incomprehensible    Power. — The   religion    of 
hate  and  the  religion  of  love 107 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  .  119 


PEBFACE 

IN  publishing  a  series  of  monographs  on  the 
"  Pioneers  in  Education/'  those  of  all  nations  and 
of  every  age,  we  have  several  aims  in  view. 

In  the  first  place,  we  wish  to  represent  the  men 
who  deserve  to  have  their  names  on  the  honour 
list  in  the  history  of  education,  all  who  have  in 
any  remarkable  way  contributed  to  the  reform  and 
progress  of  the  instruction  and  advancement  of 
humanity;  to  represent  them  as  they  lived;  to 
show  what  they  thought  and  did ;  and  to  exhibit 
their  doctrine  and  methods,  and  their  moral 
character. 

But  after  having  portrayed  each  heroic  figure 
clearly,  we  must  also  sketch  his  background ;  the 
general  tendencies  of  the  epoch  in  which  the  re- 
former lived,  the  scholastic  institutions  of  his  coun- 
try, and  the  genius,  so  to  speak,  of  his  race,  in 
order  that  we  may  set  forth  in  successive  pictures 
the  struggles  and  the  progress  of  the  civilized  races. 

In  the  last  place,  we  wish  to  do  more  than  write 
a  historical  narrative  merely.  Our  ambition  is 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

higher :  it  is  to  bring  face  to  face  ideas  held  long 
ago  with  modern  opinions,  with  the  needs  and 
aspirations  of  society  to-day,  and  thus  to  prepare 
the  way  for  a  solution  of  the  pedagogical  problems 
confronting  the  twentieth  century. 

In  this  series  of  monographs  we  have  placed 
Herbert  Spencer  directly  after  J.-J.  Rousseau,  be- 
cause it  is  useful  to  give  prominence  to  the  very 
close  descent  of  doctrine  in  what  concerns  education 
from  the  immortal  philosopher  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  to  the  illustrious  sociologist  of  our  own 
time,  who  in  the  calm  of  his  old  age  sees  his  fame 
still  extending. 

We  are  acquainted^with  no  more  genuine  disciple 
of  the  author  of  Emile  than  the  writer  of  the 
charming  essay  on  Education.  They,  doubtless, 
differ  profoundly  in  their  general  views  regarding 
mankind  and  the  universe. 

Rousseau  had  not  even  a  glimpse  of  the  great 
law  which  is  the  keystone  of  the  system  of  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  law  of  Evolution.  The  notion 
of  progress  without  defined  limit  is  quite  foreign  to 
the  former ;  and  with  his  impassive  Providence,  his 
superstitious  worship  for  a  "Nature"  created,  it 
would  seem,  perfect  at  a  stroke,  Rousseau  to-day 
may  appear  somewhat  behind  the  times  when  com- 
pared with  the  evolutionist  philosopher,  who  con- 


PREFACE  ix 

ceives  the  life  of  the  universe  as  a  perpetual  advance 
towards  a  perfection  belonging  to  the  future.  But 
none  the  less  they  have  sought  in  Nature,  differently 
understood,  but  respected,  and  proclaimed  supreme 
guide  in  education  by  both  alike,  the  principle  under- 
lying every  reform  in  education.  Many  pages  of 
this  great  book  on  Education,  —  the  substance 
of  which  we  shall  try  to  give  in  a  very  brief 
analysis  —  are  little  but  a  full  and  clear  exposition 
and  enlargement,  an  orchestral  setting,  as  it  were, 
of  themes  borrowed  from  Emile.  The  whole  book 
is  full  of  the  inspiration  of  Rousseau,  despite  the 
fact  that  he  is  never  mentioned  in  it.  Mr.  Spencer, 
in  order  to  jealously  guard  his  positivism  from  that 
of  French  origin,  wrote  a  pamphlet  entitled  Reasons 
for  dissenting  from  M.  Comte ;  he  might  as  well 
have  composed  another,  entitled,  Reasons  for  accord- 
ing with  Rousseau. 

We  dedicate  this  study,  and  those  which  follow 
it,  to  all  people  who  are  interested  in  the  cause  of 
education,  and  who  think,  as  we  do,  that  this  ques- 
tion is  the  vital  one,  the  one  upon  which  depends  the 
future  of  the  race ;  without  which  no  social  reform 
is  possible ;  that  finally,  the  progress  of  education 
is  the  question  of  lif e  and  death  for  society  and  the 
individual  alike. 


2  HERBERT  SPENCER 

methods  and  processes  to  which  he  has  become  at- 
tached himself  by  a  long  and  close  fidelity.  It  de- 
mands a  certain  amount  of  heroism  in  a  professor  or 
a  " Schoolman  "  to  reject  a  system  of  studies  in  sup- 
port of  which  he  has  spent  his  strength  and  employed 
his  life.  Moreover,  the  workman's  attention  is 
absorbed  in  the  details  and  technicalities  of  practice ; 
he  is  buried,  like  "the  good  Rollin,"  in  the  difficulties 
of  application;  he  has  neither  the  leisure,  nor  at  all 
times  the  mental  power  necessary  to  grapple  with 
the  great  questions  underlying  the  subject.  It  is 
true  that  he  sees  things  more  exactly,  for  he  studies 
them  from  a  nearer  position;  but  the  theorist,  pro- 
vided he  is  in  the  least  a  philosopher,  looks  at  them 
from  a  higher  point  of  view,  and  though  he  may  be 
in  danger  of  straying  amongst  erroneous  concep- 
tions, ideas  not  controlled  and  verified  by  experience, 
still  he  is  in  a  better  position  for  laying  hold  of  gen- 
eral truths,  —  those  which  escape  the  more  limited 
vision  of  the  practical  teacher. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  who,  like  Rousseau,  is  merely 
a  thinker  and  theorist,  shows  in  his  well-known  essay 
on  Education,  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical,1 

1  Education,  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical,  is  not,  properly 
speaking,  a  book.  It  is  a  collection  of  papers  the  author  put  to- 
gether in  1861  for  issue  in  one  volume.  The  first  chapter,  What 
Knowledge  is  of  Most  Worth,  had  appeared  in  1859  in  the  Westminster 
Review;  the  second  and  oldest,  Intellectual  Education,  in  the  North 


HERBERT  SPENCER  3 

that  the  reflective  power  of  a  strong  and  profound 
mind,  a  mind  which  has  examined  all  the  problems  of 
the  physical  and  moral  world,  may  to  some  extent 
supply  a  lack  of  professional  experience.  Certainly 
we  shall  have  to  make  important  reservations,  and 
whatever  may  be  our  admiration  for  this  ingenious 
and  seductive  work  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  we  shall 
not  spare  criticisms.1  But  his  ideas,  even  those 
which  are  most  positive  and  most  closely  systema- 
tized,—  and  these,  perhaps,  most  of  all,  —  deserve 
to  be  known,  and  we  willingly  subscribe  to  the  judg- 
ment of  a  distinguished  American  teacher,  W.  H. 
Payne,  now  Professor  in  the  University  of  Michigan, 
who  wrote,  in  1886:  "The  most  useful  and  profound 

book  which  has  been  written  on  education  since 
/ 

the  Emile  of  J.-J.  Rousseau  is  certainly  Herbert 
Spencer 's  essay." 

British  Review,  in  1854;  the  third  and  fourth,  Moral  Educa- 
tion, Physical  Education,  in  1858  and  1859,  in  the  British  Quarterly 
Review.  The  author  acknowledges  that,  as  regards  composition, 
the  book  is  not  ideal;  but  "the  four  together  form  a  relatively 
acceptable  volume." 

1  That  is  to  say,  we  could  in  no  way  unite  in  the  opinions  on  the 
one  hand  too  favourable,  and  on  the  other,  too  adverse,  either  for 
or  against,  which  two  French  philosophers,  Bertrand  and  Thamin, 
have  expressed  on  Herbert  Spencer.  The  former  says,  in  the  Pref- 
ace to  his  translation,  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  discuss  in  de- 
tail "theories  which  may  be  accepted  almost  without  reserve." 
The  second,  that  Mr.  Spencer's  book  is  "worthless  and  inconsist- 
ent." (Education  and  Positivism,  p.  106.) 


4  HERBERT  SPENCER 

//In  the  stupendous  total  of  scientific  work  to  which 
Spencer  devoted  his  life  and  consecrated  half  a 
century  of  toil,  this  little  book  on  education  seems 
at  first  view  but  a  slight  thing.  What  are  these 
couple  of  hundred  pages,  in  which  he  lays  down  in 
summary  fashion  the  essential  principles  of  intellec- 
tual education  and  of  moral  discipline,  in  comparison 
with  the  many  thousand  pages  in  which  the  same 
writer  has  set  before  us  a  system  of  the  universe 
and  explained  and  defined  all  the  forms  of  nature : 
how  they  had  their  beginning,  their  growth,  and  their 
evolution,  not  omitting  to  prophesy  their  future  and 
their  final  dissolution  ?  It  is  like  a  little  island  lost 
in  an  immense  ocean  of  ideas.  I  should  not  be  at 
all  surprised  if  Mr.  Spencer  himself  considered  this 
rather  hastily  written  early  work — >it  dates  back 
almost  to  his  youth  —  as  a  relatively  negligible 
quantity.  It  cuts  a  small  figure  by  the  side  of  the 
ten  big  volumes  in  which  the  English  positivist, 
leaving  far  behind  him  the  six  volumes  of  the 
Course  of  Positivist  Philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte, 
successively  formulated  the  First  Principles,  the 
Principles  of  Biology,  Principles  of  Psychology,  Prin- 
ciples of  Sociology,  and  finally,  Principles  of  Morality, 
having  thus  entered  upon  the  most  stupendous  in- 
vestigation into  the  universality  of  phenomena  ever 
attempted  and  carried  out  by  human  intellect. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  5 

Nevertheless,  out  of  all  that  Spencer  thought  and 
wrote,  this  short  sketch  of  a  theory  of  rational  edu- 
cation has  contributed  the  most,  at  least  in  foreign 
lands,  to  render  his  name  well  known  and  illustrious. 
Its  success  has  been  remarkable  in  every  country,  and 
especially  in  France,  where  several  translations  have 
run  into  ten  editions :  the  first  was  published  in  1878, 
when  a  reform  of  our  scholastic  institutions  was 
just  beginning.  Of  all  the  author's  works  it  is, 
perhaps,  this  which  has  the  greatest  chance  of  sur- 
viving, for  philosophical  hypotheses  are  frequently 
very  short-lived,  and  in  the  shipwreck  of  systems 
which  a  philosopher  has  with  very  great  labour 
built  up,  it  is  sometimes  only  a  few  grains  of  familiar 
truth  and  good  sense  scattered  negligently 
prodigal  hand,  which  mount  to  the  surface  and  are 
collected  as  a  precious,  sacred  relic  by  posterity. 

Yet,  let  us  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that 
the  composition  of  Education  was  a  mere  accident 
in  Spencer's  scientific  career,  —  the  passing  relaxa- 
tion of  a  few  leisure  hours.  An  evidence  that  he 
felt  the  paramount  importance  of  his  subject  is  the 
fact  that  he  very  frequently  returned  to  it  during 
the  course  of  his  publications. 

Is  it  not,  moreover,  evident  that  a  psychologist 
and  sociologist  such  as  Herbert  Spencer,  who  was 
far  from  being  a  mere  speculative  scientist,  inclined 


6  HERBERT  SPENCER 

to  shut  himself  up  with  egoistic  indifference  in  his 
ivory  tower;  who,  on  the  contrary,  probed  the 
secrets  of  nature  with  an  intense  ardour,  solely  to 
derive  therefrom  practical  results;  who  desired  to 
understand  mankind  fully,  only  that  he  might  con- 
tribute to  their  happiness;  could  such  a  man  fail 
to  interest  himself  in  the  solution  of  a  question  partly 
involving  the  future  of  individuals  and  of  societies? 
Though  nature  appeared  to  him  a  result  of  the  inex- 
orable laws  of  evolution,  the  work  of  "  a  benevolent 
necessity,"  to  use  his  expression,  yet  he  did  not  the 
less  understand  that  education,  that  is  to  say,  human 
effort,  —  a  double  mode  of  effort,  since  it  demands 
activity  from  both  master  and  pupil  at  the  same 
time,  —  has  its  place  to  claim  within  the  narrow, 
determinist  system  of  nature;  that  humanity,  hav- 
ing been  conducted  along  the  necessary  path  of  de- 
velopment by  the  unconscious  will  of  heredity  and 
evolution,  has  yet  an  obligation,  and  this  presup- 
poses the  power  to  govern  and  train  itself,  in  order 
that  it  may  help  in  the  progressive  upward  move- 
ment ;  that,  in  brief,  nature  could  not  do  without  the 
aid  of  human  will  entirely,  will  that  is  better  en- 
lightened regarding  the  end  to  be  reached  and  the 
means  to  be  employed.  Hence  this  essay  on  Educa- 
tion appears  to  us  like  homage  paid  willingly  or  un- 
willingly by  the  philosopher  of  evolution  and  its 


HERBERT   SPENCER  7 

necessary  laws  —  possibly  at  the  cost  of  a  contra- 
diction —  to  the  power  of  human  liberty. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  expound,  even  in  briefest 
form,  the  System  of  Synthetic  Philosophy.  F.  How- 
ard Collins,  a  disciple  of  Spencer,  merely  to  make 
an  abstract  of  it,  has  written  a  volume  of  six  hundred 
pages.  Every  system  of  pedagogy  doubtless  implies 
a  philosophy;  and  we  shall  have  occasion  during 
the  course  of  our  task  to  indicate  how  Mr.  Spencer's 
pedagogical  notions  are  connected  with  his  general 
conceptions,  with  the  theory  of  evolution  as  under- 
stood by  him,  with  his  ethics  and  sociology.  Let 
us  note,  however,  now,  that  his  essay  on  Education 
dates  from  a  period  when  he  was  still  groping  after, 
and  marking  out,  the  great  lines  of  his  system,  the 
elaboration  of  which  did  not  actually  begin  until 
about  1854.  The  first  volume  of  his  Synthetic 
Philosophy  appeared  only  some  years  later,  in 
1866.  To  profit  by  his  reflections  on  the  educative 
influence  of  science,  the  effectiveness  of  object  les- 
sons, the  discipline  of  natural  reactions,  it  is  in  no 
way  necessary  to  have  made  oneself  familiar  with 
the  technical  terminology  appropriate  to  his  philo- 
sophical arguments.  Neither  " differentiation,"  nor 
' '  integration, "  "  segregation, "  or  "  equilibration ' ' 
are  matters  of  importance  here.  Nothing  reminds 
the  reader  of  the  luminous  pages  of  Education,  of 


8  HERBERT  SPENCER 

the  complicated  formulae,  deliberately  rendered 
obscure  to  the  uninitiated,  which  form  the  conclusion 
to  the  First  Principles;  for  example,  this  passage: 
"Life  is  a  definite  combination  of  heterogeneous 
changes,  at  once  simultaneous  and  successive,  cor- 
responding with  coexistences  and  external  se- 
quences;" or  again:  "Evolution  is  an  integration 
of  matter  accompanied  by  dissipation  of  movement, 
during  which  matter  passes  from  indefinite,  inco- 
herent homogeneity,  to  definite,  coherent  homo- 
geneity." When,  at  the  beginning  of  his  long  career, 
Mr.  Spencer  let  himself  for  a  while  be  drawn  aside 
from  his  purely  scientific  researches,  to  write  an 
essay  which,  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of 
school  studies,  may  be  called  the  apotheosis  of  sci- 
ence, he  desired  to  be  understood  of  every  one ;  and 
this  book,  not  a  fragment  of  his  system,  and  on  many 
points  quite  independent  of  it,  is  distinguished  by 
clearness  of  ideas,  not  less  than  by  lucidity  of  style 
and  vigorous  ease  of  argument. 

But  if  there  is  no  reason  for  initiating  our  readers 
into  the  details  of  Mr.  Spencer's  speculations,  —  a 
task  which  for  the  rest  would  be  impossible, — 
it  may  not  be  useless,  before  entering  upon  an 
examination  of  his  pedagogical  work,  to  make 
acquaintance  with  the  workman,  with  the  general 
tendencies  of  his  mind.  In  that  way  we  shall 


HERBERT  SPENCER  9 

understand  how  he  was  led  to  take  up  the  question 
of  education,  and  under  what  kind  of  inspiration  he 
expounded  it. 

His  long  life,  entirely  devoted  to  study,  can  be 
briefly  described.  It  was  the  unbroken  life  of  a 
scholar,  altogether  occupied  in  writing  and  thinking. 
He  never  allowed  himself  to  be  turned  aside  from 
what  he  considered  his  mission  in  the  world  by  any 
kind  of  distraction,  whether  of  occupation  or  trouble. 
He  did  not  even  consent  to  accept  academic  honours ; 
for  example,  he  refused  the  title  of  correspondent 
of  the  Institute  of  France,  which  was  offered  to  him 
a  few  years  ago  by  the  "  Academy  of  Moral  and 
Political  Science."  The  only  events,  or  almost  the 
only  ones,  which  broke  the  monotony  of  his  indus- 
trious life  were  the  successive  publication  of  the 
different  volumes  composing  the  monument  raised 
by  Mr.  Spencer  to  science  and  philosophy.  Unfor- 
tunately, also,  serious  attacks  of  illness  rather  de- 
layed or  entirely  interrupted  mental  application 
several  times ;  his  brain  suffered  a  kind  of  paralysis 
through  overstrain.  This  malady  first  attacked  him 
in  1855,  when  he  was  still  a  young  man,  —  he  was 
born  in  1820,  —  and  after  a  complete  rest  of  eighteen 
months  he  could  work  only  three  hours  a  day.  He 
had  his  hours  of  discouragement,  and  he  bore  some 
reverses;  thus  he  acknowledges  that  he  published 


10  HERBERT  SPENCER 

books  " which  did  not  return  what  they  cost/'  and 
he  gathered  "more  fame  than  money." 

How  often,  when  completely  laid  up  through 
nervous  exhaustion,  especially  during  the  years  1886 
to  1890,  did  he  despair  of  ever  finishing  his  colossal 
undertaking,  a  task  completed  only  in  1896.  ...  At 
that  time,  an  invalid  seventy-six  years  of  age,  a  cry 
of  satisfaction  escaped  him  when  he  published  his 
last  volume.  "My  chief  feeling  about  it,"  he  said,  "is 
that  of  being  set  free,  liberated  from  my  task.  ..." 
He  who  protested  so  often  and  so  eloquently  against 
overloading  and  overstraining  the  brain  was  him- 
self a  most  conspicuous  victim  of  this  evil.  He  was 
one  of  several  men  of  genius  who  have  proved  that 
physical  weakness  is  no  bar  to  intellectual  strength. 
His  illustrious  fellow-countryman,  Charles  Darwin, 
the  author  of  The  Origin  of  Species,  furnishes 
another  example;  Darwin's  son  tells  us  that  "one 
of  the  chief  features  of  his  father's  life  was  that  for 
nearly  forty  years  he  never  knew  one  day  of  the 
health  of  ordinary  men."  It  might  be  said  of  both 
Spencer  and  Darwin  that  the  life  of  these  great 
toilers  "was  one  long  combat  with  fatigue  and 
illness." 

Spencer  was  not  a  man  to  expose  himself  to  the 
public  gaze.  Like  a  philosopher,  he  remained  hid- 
den, whereas  Rousseau  published  his  life  abroad, 


HERBERT   SPENCER  11 

not  withholding  even  the  details  that  are  most 
personal  and  least  fit  for  confession.  We  know 
little  about  Herbert  Spencer's  youth.  He  has  not 
recounted,  like  John  Stuart  Mill,  the  course  of  his 
early  education  and  the  growth  of  his  intellectual 
power.  He  has,  however,  told  us  enough  to  enable 
us  to  discover  in  the  movements  of  his  mind  during 
youth  the  germs  of  his  future  vocation.  He  has 
spoken  of  his  ardent  devotion  then  to  scientific  re- 
search, and  his  inclination  for  the  study  of  moral 
and  social  questions.  Stimulus  in  this  direction 
was  present  also  in  his  own  family.  One  of  his 
uncles,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Spencer,  a  minister, 
appears  to  have  been  a  philanthropist  and  friend 
of  the  poor,  and  to  have  taken  an  active  and  leading 
part  in  providing  for  the  well-being  of  his  fellow- 
citizens;  in  the  village  in  which  he  lived  for  forty 
years  as  minister  he  established  a  school,  a  public 
library,  and  a  clothing  society.  Nothing  is  lost  in 
this  world,  and  the  example  of  the  older  generation 
suggests  ideas  and  deeds  to  the  younger  generation. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  doubtless  from  his  father 
that  Herbert  Spencer  inherited  his  taste  for  obser- 
vation and  love  of  natural  science.  His  father,  a 
teacher  in  a  humble  position  in  the  little  town  of 
Derby,  was  appointed  in  1814  (six  years  before  the 
birth  of  his  son)  secretary  to  a  society  of  lovers  of 


12  HERBERT  SPENCER 

natural  science  organized  by  Erasmus  Darwin, 
the  grandfather  of  the  naturalist.  He  studied  spe- 
cially entomology,  and  the  little  Herbert,  still  quite 
a  child,  made,  in  obedience  to  his  father's  directions, 
small  collections  of  insects  from  the  neighbouring 
fields;  in  years  to  come  he  will  collect  in  the  same 
way,  searching  every  corner  and  recess  of  the  globe, 
an  infinite  mass  of  facts,  —  facts  from  experience  and 
from  records.  " Whoever,"  he  writes,  "has  not 
when  a  child  collected  insects  and  plants,  knows 
nothing  of  the  poetry  shining  over  the  fields  and 
roadside  hedges.  ..." 

We  must  note  that  when  ^Spencer  first  ventured 
before  the  public,  he  took  up  moral  and  political 
questions,  and  that  these  he  never  forsook.  His 
first  work,  published  in  1842,  was  an  essay  entitled, 
The  Proper  Sphere  of  Government;  he  already  as- 
serted in  it  the  principle  of  progress,  and  although 
he  published  Social  Statistics  in  1850,  he  completed 
and  crowned  his  system  with  his  Principles  of  Moral- 
ity.1 He  considered  this  part  of  his  theory  of  es- 
pecial importance.  .  .  .  "There  is  urgent  need," 

1  The  last  chapters  of  Principles  of  Morality  appeared  in  1892 
and  1896.  But  already,  in  1879,  fearing  that  health  might  perma- 
nently fail,  even  if  life  did  not  end  before  reaching  the  last  part 
of  the  task,  .Spencer  had  published  the  first  part  of  the  volume 
under  the  title,  The  Basis  of  Evolutionary  Ethics,  interrupting  thus 
the  proposed  order  of  his  publications,  seeing  that  the  second  or 


HERBERT  SPENCER  13 

he  said,  "of  establishing  the  laws  of  right  conduct 
on  scientific  principles." 

Such  a  profound  moralist  could  not  help  becoming 
an  educationist;  and,  moreover,  in  his  intense  pur- 
suit of  his  goal,  a  goal  encyclopaedic  in  character,  he 
touched  on  every  subject.  If  we  read  only  his  three 
volumes  of  Political  and  Scientific  Essays,1  in  which 
we  pass  from  an  article  on  "The  Constitution  of 
the  Sun,"  or  on  the  "Nebular  Hypothesis,"  to 
dissertations  quite  as  learned  on  the  "Philosophy 
of  Style,"  the  "Origin  and  Function  of  Music," 
or,  it  may  be  on  the  "Ways  and  Proceedings  of 
Railway  Administration,"  we  recognize  that  he  is 
interested  in  every  subject :  education,  then,  could 
not  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  him. 

Indeed,  the  chief  characteristic  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
intellectual  activity  is  the  extraordinary  extent  of 
his  information  about  all  subjects.  Look  at  the 
list  of  what  he  calls  his  "references"  at  the  end  of 
one  of  the  volumes  of  his  Synthetic  Philosophy,  at  the 
catalogue  of  authors  whom  he  cites  as  authorities 
for  the  content  of  any  one  of  his  books,  and  you  will 
learn  the  boundless  variety  of  his  reading.  Is  there 
any  subject  of  which  he  is  ignorant  ?  Any  authority 

third  parts  of  the  Principles  of  Sociology,  which  logically  should 
have  preceded  the  Ethics,  did  not  appear  until  after  1880. 

1  The  Essays  were  translated  into  French  by  A.  Burdeau  in  1879. 


14  HERBERT  SPENCER 

whom  he  has  not  consulted?  He  quotes  Aristotle 
and  criticises  Kant,  but  he  is  no  whit  less  acquainted 
with  the  customs  and  superstitions  of  the  natives 
of  Oceania.  He  began  life  as  a  civil  engineer,  em- 
ployed by  a  railway  company;  his  genius  for  inves- 
tigation quickly  drew  him  away  from  this  subordi- 
nate position;  and  his  keen  and  eager  intellect  be- 
came enriched  with  all  the  wealth  of  modern  science. 
He  has  studied  the  moral  and  religious  beliefs  of 
mankind  as  much  as  the  physical  law  of  gravitation, 
and  observed  the  customs  and  costumes  of  many 
nations  with  the  same  care  as  the  movements  of  the 
stars.  He  knew  the  Esquimaux  and  Papuans  as 
well  as  he  knows  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans. 
He  is  acquainted  with  what  is  happening  amongst  the 
Fijians,  and  also  with  how  they  feed  children  in 
Paris  and  its  suburbs ;  yet  he  could  supply  informa- 
tion to  our  poet  and  dramatist,  M.  Brieux,  author 
of  the  Remplacantes.  .  .  .  Englishmen,  thanks  to 
their  great  colonies  and  their  commercial  relations 
with  all  parts  of  the  world,  are  exceptionally  well 
placed  for  studying  human  beings.  Philosophers 
push  their  observations  to  every  land  to  which  the 
political  influence  or  industrial  expansion  of  Eng- 
land has  extended.  Hence  Mr.  Spencer  has  been 
able  to  satisfy  his  thirst  for  knowledge,  and  as 
preparation  for  his  psychological  and  moral  theories 


HERBERT  SPENCER  15 

he  has  laid  under  contribution  all  the  civilized  na- 
tions and  savage  peoples  of  the  universe. 

The  objection  might,  indeed,  be  raised  that  Mr. 
Spencer  has  gathered  with  full  hands  observations 
made  by  other  people,  rather  than  made  them  him- 
self. That  is  what  Darwin  gently  insinuated  in 
spite  of  the  deep  admiration  he  professed  to  feel 
for  Mr.  Spencer,  when  he  wrote  in  1866:  "Were 
Mr.  Spencer  to  make  more  observations  himself, 
even  at  the  risk  of  losing  some  of  his  power  of  re- 
flection, —  according  to  the  law  of  balance  and  com- 
pensation, —  he  would  be  a  marvellous  man.  .  .  ." 

It  is  precisely  this  " power  of  reflection,"  this 
constructive  power,  which  is  Mr.  Spencer's  second 
distinctive  feature.  This  collector  of  facts  is  also 
a  reasoner,  an  inductive  thinker.  A  tendency  to 
generalize,  a  genius  for  synthesis,  inspires  and  urges 
him  on.  No  thinker  surpasses  him  in  the  power  of 
linking  and  coordinating  ideas,  and  zeal  for  logical 
system.  In  this  direction  he  is,  indeed,  the  Auguste 
Comte  of  England,  though  he  has  always  declined 
to  acknowledge  himself  a  follower  of  the  French 
leader  of  Positivism;  and,  in  a  sharp  defence  of  his 
incontestable  claims  to  originality,  he  has  marked 
his  disagreement  in  bold  relief  in  the  pamphlet  en- 
titled, Reasons  for  dissenting  from  M.  Comte.  In  this 
also  he  has  merited  the  title  of  a  "Spinoza  in  Posi- 


16  HERBERT  SPENCER 

tivism."  He  does  not  object  to  be  called  "Posi- 
tivist " ;  and  a  Spinoza  he  is  in  the  sense  that  he  also 
has  tried  to  construct  a  system  of  the  universe  by 
deductions  almost  as  rigorous  as  the  geometrical 
demonstrations  of  the  author  of  The  Ethics. 

That  Mr.  Spencer  and  his  bold  speculations  have 
not  escaped  criticism,  opposition,  and,  most  of  all, 
indifference,  in  his  own  country,  is  not  a  matter  for 
surprise.  The  English  intellect,  different  from  the 
German,  tends  to  be  timid  in  facing  speculative 
theories ;  it  prefers  exact  observations  to  hazardous" 
hypotheses,  cautious  and  limited  inductions.  Mr. 
Spencer  has  not  lacked  admirers,  and  these  from 
amongst  the  greatest  men  of  his  time.  Darwin 
was  outspoken  in  expressions  of  sympathy.  An 
elective  affinity,  moreover,  could  not  fail  to  unite 
the  naturalist  who  constructed,  through  observation 
of  variations  among  species,  the  theory  of  natural 
selection  and  of  the  evolution  of  the  race,  with  the 
philosopher  who  by  bold  generalizations  aimed  at 
explaining  and  interpreting  all  phenomena  "  in  the 
order  of  evolution."  When  Darwin,  in  1859,  published 
his  Origin  of  Species,  he  could  not  have  found  a  reader 
better  prepared  to  understand  and  appreciate  it 
than  Herbert  Spencer.  Several  times  Mr.  Spencer 
had  written  to  congratulate  him  on  his  "admirable" 
labours.  From  the  year  1852  the  two  evolutionists 


HERBERT  SPENCER  17 

were  associated  in  a  scientific  friendship  (as  Renan 
and  Berthelot  in  France),  and  this  never  changed. 
"I  presume,"  Darwin  said,  in  1870,  "that  later  Mr. 
Spencer  will  be  considered  by  far  the  greatest  phi- 
losopher of  the  present  century,  if,  indeed,  he  is  not 
held  equal  to  the  greatest  of  the  philosophers  of  the 
past  ages."  J.  S.  Mill  also  rendered  him  no  slight 
measure  of  homage  in  his  book  on  Auguste  Comte : 
"Mr.  Spencer  is  one  of  the  most  profound  thinkers 
yet  sprung  from  English  philosophy,  a  man  imbued- 
with  a  truly  scientific  spirit."  We  shall  find  this 
"truly  scientific  spirit"  the  inspirer  of  the  scheme 
of  education  outlined  by  Mr.  Spencer. 

Moreover,  to  all  his  other  gifts  the  author  adds 
an  excellent  style,  a  feature  which  has  certainly 
contributed  to  the  success  of  this  book.  If  the 
course  of  studies  proposed  by  him  in  a  spirit  of  scien- 
tific exclusiveness  is  such  as  would  hinder  the  ac- 
quisition of  literary  power  amongst  students  adopt- 
ing it,  Mr.  Spencer  is  far  from  despising  literary 
qualities  himself.  The  art  of  exposition  and  of 
setting  forth  abstract  ideas  in  order,  clearly,  fully, 
and  easily,  has  never  been  carried  to  a  higher  point 
by  any  philosopher.  Ingenious  comparisons,  brill- 
iant similes  and  figures  of  speech  brighten  the  heavy 
mass  of  solid  thought.  The  weighty  erudition  of  the 
scientist  does  not  suppress  the  sallies  of  a  humorous 


18  HERBERT  SPENCER 

talker.  He  likes  to  relieve  the  monotony  of  a  disserta- 
tion by  popular  expressions.  He  tells  us  what  Hodge 
and  Giles  said,  "  after  comparing  notes  over  their 
respective  pigsties."  He  listens  to  the  conversation 
of  farmers  seated  around  the  table  of  a  village  inn 
after  church  service  on  Sunday.  And  yet  a  careful 
method  dominates  the  order  in  which  his  brilliant 
and  varied  ideas  are  set  forth.  It  might  be  said 
that  the  writer  was  giving  loose  rein  to  the  eager 
flight  of  his  thought  and  fancy.  Not  so;  he  is  on 
guard,  and  quite  their  master.  At  the  end  of  each 
fully  developed  notion  he  reviews  and  condenses 
the  essential  points  in  simple  and  forcible  phrases. 
If  at  times  he  repeats  himself,  that  is  because  he 
is  seeking  twenty  different  ways,  each  interesting, 
of  kindling  the  imagination  of  his  readers.  In  short, 
this  book  on  Education  shows  no  trace  of  the  heavi- 
ness characteristic  of  didactic  treatises;  it  has  all 
the  charm  of  an  agreeable  conversation,  lively  wit, 
and  what  one  writer  has  even  called  "  rough  good 
humour. "  Mr.  Spencer  is  one  of  the  fortunate 
writers  who,  after  spending  years  with  the  patience 
of  a  Benedictine  friar  in  preparing  enormous  learned 
compendiums,  can  yet  wield,  as  if  for  sport,  a  facile 
pen  in  the  composition  of  sparkling  articles  for  re- 
views. 


n 

ONE  can  quickly  gain  an  insight  into  Mr.  Spencer's 
intentions  concerning  education  by  quoting  a  pas- 
sage in  which  he  uses  the  Cinderella  fairy  story  to 
describe  the  approaching  discomfiture  of  literary 
studies  and  the  decisive  victory  of  science.  "  Para- 
phrasing an  Eastern  fable,  we  may  say  that  hi  the 
household  of  knowledges  science  is  the  household 
drudge,  who  in  obscurity  hides  unrecognized  per- 
fections. To  her  has  been  committed  all  the  work; 
by  her  skill,  intelligence,  and  devotion  have  all  con- 
veniences and  gratifications  been  obtained ;  and  while 
ceaselessly  ministering  to  the  rest,  she  has  been  kept 
in  the  background,  that  her  haughty  sisters  might 
flaunt  their  fripperies  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  The 
parallel  holds  yet  further.  For  we  are  fast  coming  to 
the  denouement,  when  the  positions  will  be  changed; 
and  while  these  haughty  sisters  sink  into  merited 
neglect,  Science,  proclaimed  as  highest  in  worth 
and  beauty,  will  reign  supreme."  Nothing  could 
be  more  clearly  stated:  literature  will  decline  and 
fall,  even  the  merit  of  contributing  its  share  to  the 

19 


20  HERBERT  SPENCER 

pleasures  of  life  would  seem  to  be  denied ;  science  — 
henceforth  ruling  the  school  as  it  now  rules  the  world 
— is  to  triumph  as  supreme  sovereign.  In  the  an- 
cient quarrel  of  humanism  versus  realism,  Mr.  Spen- 
cer took  sides  decisively.  He  did  not  hesitate  in 
the  least  between  the  claims  of  rival  specialists 
who  are  constantly  renewing  the  scene  in  the 
Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,  where  a  teacher  of  philoso- 
phy and  a  teacher  of  dancing  each  demands  the  first 
place  for  his  own  subject,  and  wrangle  over  the 
control  of  the  curriculum.  To  the  all-important 
question,  "What  knowledge  is  of  most  worth?" 
he  makes  the  reply,  "Science,  science  as  a  whole, 
every  science."  * 

This  strife  is  not  new.  It  has  burst  forth  several 
times  and  aroused  passionate  reprisals;  and,  in  spite 
of  Mr.  Spencer's  emphatic  conclusions,  we  may  deem 
the  question  still  unsettled.  At  any  rate,  that  was 
the  case  in  France  in  1837,  when,  in  a  discussion 
worthy  to  be  remembered,  Lamartine,  with  all  the 
charm  of  his  eloquence,  defended  the  cause  of  clas- 
sical literature.  He  claimed  for  it  the  honour  of 
being  the  vehicle  of  moral  ideas,  a  sacred  portion 
of  the  inherited  wealth  of  civilization:  " With- 
out literature,"  said  he,  " humanity  would  perish;" 

1  On  this  question  of  Educational  Values,  see  Chapter  VI,  in 
Bain's  Science  of  Education. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  21 

on  the  other  hand,  Arago,  with  all  the  authority 
of  his  learning,  asserted  the  superiority  of  scientific 
studies.  Nor  was  it  settled  in  England  in  1836, 
when  the  philosopher  Hamilton  replied  to  Dr. 
Whewell,  who  desired  that  education  should  be 
established  on  a  basis  of  mathematics,  as  was  then 
becoming  the  practice  at  the  Cambridge  Univer- 
sity. Hamilton  pronounced  in  favour  of  liter- 
ary studies,  and  he  proved  forcibly  that  educa- 
tion, if  reduced  to  the  abstract  sciences,  would  be 
narrowed  and  stunted.  "  Geometry,"  to  use  the  ex- 
pression of  Voltaire, ' '  trains  upright  minds  only. ' '  In 
this  particular  controversy,  however,  it  was  only  a 
question  of  mathematics,  whereas  Mr.  Spencer  took 
the  larger  subject  and  discussed  it  in  all  its  breadth 
—the  whole  of  science  in  its  universal  aspect  versus 
the  classic  humanities.  The  dispute  was  not  ended 
in  1866  when  J.  S.  Mill,  in  a  speech  before  the  Univer- 
sity of  St.  Andrews,  refused  to  sacrifice  either  study 
in  fav^tr  of  the  other,  holding  that  both  contain 
elements  equally  indispensable  for  education;  he 
exclaimed  on  that  occasion,  with  a  vivacious  freedom 
of  speech:  "Do  you  ask  whether  we  should  resort 
to  languages  or  to  science  in  order  to  organize  gen- 
eral education,  that  is  equivalent  to  inquiring  whether 
painters  ought  to  be  artists  with  the  pencil  or  with 
the  brush,  whether  a  tailor  should  make  coats  or 


22  HERBERT  SPENCER 

breeches;  why  not  both,  I  ask?"  And  it  seems  as 
if  the  question  were  not  finally  decided  even  to-day. 
During  the  course  of  the  important  inquiry  lately 
carried  out  by  the  French  Parliament,  certain  voices, 
even  those  of  humanists,  asserted  that  classical 
literature  is  condemned  to  disappear  sooner  or  later. 
Other  witnesses,  and  these  not  the  least  important 
authorities  on  French  education,  without  denying 
the  legitimate  and  increasing  need  of  instruction  in 
science,  persisted  in  demanding  for  literature  the 
first,  if  not  the  only,  place  as  culture  material. 

Nevertheless,  the  friends  of  scientific  education 
are  numerous,  and  they  do  not  date  from  recent  years 
only.  Mr.  Spencer  had  predecessors :  Rabelais,  Con- 
dorcet,  and  many  others.  Diderot  may  be  specially 
mentioned.  He,  before  Auguste  Comte,  tried  to 
classify  the  sciences  in  order  of  rank,  according  to 
their  measure  of  utility  or  power  of  serving  univer- 
sal needs.  In  his  scheme  of  studies  he  scornfully 
relegated  literature  to  the  last  school  years.  Even 
poets  have  protested  against  the  abuse  of  literary 
studies.  Milton,  three  hundred  years  ago,  groaned 
over  the  lot  of  schoolboys  obliged,  by  a  wrongly 
conceived  education,  "to  glue  their  faces,"  he  said, 
"to  the  platitudes  of  the  grammarian."  The  far- 
ther mankind  advances,  the  more  they  desire  in- 
struction in  science.  In  France,  M.  Berthelot  in- 


HERBERT  SPENCER  23 

sists  on  "the  need  of  habituating  children  in  early 
years  to  scientific  conceptions  and  methods,"  classic 
instruction  "becoming  more  and  more  reserved  for 
the  minority."  Even  Renan  states  that  "scien- 
tific investigations  should  not  be  left  only  to  ama- 
teurs and  inquisitive  minds."  l  For  England,  it  suf- 
fices to  cite  Lubbock,  who  asserts  that  scientific 
education  is  "a  national  necessity."  Lastly,  Darwin 
agrees  with  Mr.  Spencer  about  reform  in  education 
as  well  as  about  the  origin  of  species.  When,  hi 
1852,  he  was  engaged  in  educating  his  seven  children, 
and  resigned  himself  to  sending  the  eldest  of  his  sons 
to  Rugby  Public  School,  he  wrote:  "No  one  could 
despise  more  sincerely  than  I  do  the  stupid  stereo- 
typed education  of  former  days,  and  yet  I  lacked 
the  courage  to  break  its  chains."  Mr.  Spencer  broke 
them  more  than  once.  But,  above  all,  he  attempted 
what  had  not  been  done  hitherto,  to  demonstrate 
fully  and  methodically  the  utility  and  the  paramount 
importance  of  science  considered  as  the  essential 
factor  in  determining  a  man's  fate  hi  life,  and  hence 
the  instrument  of  his  education. 

For  what  end  is  a  man  born?  To  be  happy. 
Happy,  but  certainly  not  hi  the  sense  a  foolish  ego- 
ism or  narrow  utilitarianism  sometimes  imagines; 

1  Les  Services  que  la  science  rend  au  peuple,  a  conference  held  in 
1869  and  published  in  the  Grande  Revue,  June,  1901. 


24  HERBERT   SPENCER 

happy  in  the  noblest  sense  of  the  word,  compre- 
hending the  happiness  of  others  equally  with  our 
personal  well-being, — the  satisfaction  of  altruistic 
sentiments  as  well  as  of  egoistic  inclinations.  Happi- 
ness signifies  a  life  in  which  all  essential  activities 
find  exercise,  lived  out  to  the  full.  It  is  a  life  of 
the  relative  perfection  of  human  beings  who  are 
still  far  from  the  goal  of  their  evolution,  for  the  day 
will  come  when  mankind  will  be  absolutely  perfect. 
Humanity  may  reach  perfection  in  this  world,  but 
only  after  passing  through  a  long  childhood,  long 
ages  of  labour.  Provided  that  men  live  long 
enough,  and  that  the  constitution  of  things  remains 
as  it  is  now,  the  modifications  which  they  are  ex- 
periencing and  those  yet  to  come  must  culminate 
in  perfection.  It  is  certain  that  what  we  call  evil 
and  immorality  will  finally  disappear.  It  is  certain 
that  the  destiny  of  man  is  to  be  perfect.  .  .  .  Phi- 
losophers used  to  place  the  golden  age  in  the  past; 
perfection  they  looked  upon  as  the  direct  gift  of  the 
Creator  to  his  creature.  Mr.  Spencer  greets  it  afar 
in  the  future  as  the  work  of  centuries  of  effort  on 
the  part  of  nature,  the  result  of  the  ceaseless  progress 
of  a  humanity  moving  towards  perfection  from  age 
to  age.  Little  by  little  a  wealth  of  new  sentiments 
are  grafted  on  to  a  trunk  of  primitive  instincts,  and, 
finally,  thanks  to  hereditary  accumulations,  we  shall 


HERBERT  SPENCER  25 

have  insensibly  entered  into,  and  consolidated,  our  full 
patrimony.  Rousseau's  ideal  man  was  an  imaginary 
primitive  being,  formed  by  Providence  all  at  once. 
The  "full"  man  of  Spencer  is  the  hard- won  product 
of  evolution  and  heredity, —  not  a  Pallas  Athense 
who  steps  full  armed  from  the  head  of  Jupiter,  but 
the  offspring  of  a  race  which  in  its  last  expansion 
reaches  the  goal  of  its  evolution.  He  is  a  being 
elaborated  by  successive  generations,  a  being  in 
whom  all  the  qualities,  gradually  acquired,  will 
be  summed  up,  and  who,  by  means  of  progressive 
adoptions  will  have  gained  the  power  of  living  in 
society,  "as  a  fish  lives  in  the  water  and  a  bird  in 
the  air."  Then  man  will  have  become,  if  not  a  god, 
yet  at  least  a  perfect  animal,  directed  in  everything 
by  excellent,  infallible  instincts.  Altruistic  senti- 
ments, transmitted  by  heredity,  will  exercise  an 
all-powerful  influence  on  his  conduct.  He  will  ac- 
complish moral  actions  with  ease,  as  a  bird  builds 
its  nest,  and  a  spider  spins  its  web.  Effort  and 
struggle  to  avoid  evil  and  follow  the  good  will  cease. 
Obedience  to  habits  formed  by  ancestors,  and  trans- 
formed as  they  pass  on  from  one  generation  to  an- 
other into  irresistible  instincts,  will  be  pleasant 
and  easy. 

Still  we  are  far  from  this  terrestrial  paradise,  which 
at  present  is  a  mere  dream.    We  are  only  crossing 


26  HERBERT  SPENCER 

one  of  the  stages  along  the  route  thither,  and  mean- 
while, until  evolution  and  heredity  have  accom- 
plished their  task,  we  must  think  of  man  as  he  is,  — 
man  yet  very  badly  adapted  to  the  conditions  under 
which  he  must  live.  He  must  be  made  ready,  as 
far  as  possible,  for  that  perfect  life  which  is  the  goal 
of  human  destiny.  We  are  yet  in  a  state  where 
effort  is  necessary.  And  hence  the  need  of  educa- 
tion becomes  evident,  however  much  its  efforts  may 
be  weakened  and  limited  by  the  inexorable  laws 
which  rule  over  the  onward  march  of  humanity. 
Besides  this,  education  does  not  only  prove  advan- 
tageous to  those  who  receive  it;  it  helps  to  form 
the  character  of  the  children  of  educated  people 
before  their  birth.  The  more  the  present  generations 
regulate  their  actions  according  to  laws  prescribed 
by  education,  the  more  fruitful  will  be  the  springs 
of  life  transmitted  by  them  to  following  generations. 
It  is  clear  that  from  this  point  of  view  the  mission 
of  education  assumes  a  still  wider  and  nobler  aspect, 
since  it  is  no  longer  a  personal  matter,  —  the  inter- 
est of  the  individual, — but  is  the  interest  of  the  whole 
of  humanity,  the  progress  of  which  will  be  retarded 
or  hastened  according  to  the  degree  in  which  teach- 
ers, during  each  period,  have  accomplished  their 
task,  whether  well  or  ill. 
What,  then,  will  be  that  education  which  may  be 


HERBERT  SPENCER  27 

defined  as  an  individual  and  provisional  preparation 
for  the  complete  and  finally  determined  life  of  hu- 
manity as  a  whole  ?  To  discover  this,  we  must  first 
decide  what  are  the  elements  of  a  complete  life; 
we  must  enumerate  and  classify  the  various  forms 
of  activity  which  constitute  it.  When  this  has  been 
done,  we  shall  know  what  is  man's  true  destiny,  and 
in  consequence  we  shall  have  a  criterion,  —  a  stand- 
ard of  appreciation  which  will  enable  us  to  make 
a  rational  choice  amongst  the  different  subjects  of 
study,  and  decide  the  relative  value  of  the  various 
knowledges;  for  any  knowledge  will  have  value  in 
proportion  as  it  favours  more  or  less  the  exercise  of 
those  essential  activities  which  conduce  both  to 
individual  and  social  happiness. 

Nothing  could  be  clearer  than  the  picture  of  the 
manifold  functions  of  life  sketched  by  Mr.  Spencer. 
He  distributes  them,  certainly,  under  distinct  cate- 
gories ;  but  he  does  not  forget  to  note  that  they  are 
closely  linked  and  fused  the  one  with  the  other,  that 
they  form  a  whole,  a  mass,  no  element  of  which  may 
be  omitted  and  neglected  without  injury. 

The  first  business  of  a  man  is  to  live  a  healthy 
physical  life.  If  he  does  not  know  how  to  guaran- 
tee health  and  strength,  he  will  be  unfitted  for 
activity  of  every  other  kind.  It  is  then  expedient, 
when  classifying  the  different  human  functions,  to 


28  HERBERT  SPENCER 

put  those  acts  which  tend  directly  to  insure  personal 
preservation  in  the  first  rank. 

But  to  be  well  and  healthy  is  not  enough ;  we  must 
also  be  able  to  earn  daily  bread,  and  even  something 
more.  From  this  springs  a  second  group  of  activities, 
those  which  concern  the  production  and  acquisition 
of  material  things,  all  things  necessary  for  life,  and 
which  also  assist,  though  indirectly,  in  securing  per- 
sonal safety  and  preservation. 

When  the  individual  has  secured  means  of  living 
in  comfort,  the  horizon  widens  before  him.  A  man 
should  employ  his  strength  in  the  service  of  his 
family;  so  a  third  category  of  his  labours  includes 
those  which  aim  at  nourishing  and  training  children. 

The  cares  of  the  citizen  come  next  to  those  of  the 
family.  These  involve  a  new  series  of  activities 
which  are,  however,  subordinate  to  family  duties; 
for  family  prosperity  is  the  foundation  of  the  pros- 
perity of  the  city. 

Lastly,  human  existence  is  completed  and  crowned 
by  the  exercise  of  activities  which  we  may  express 
by  one  word,  " aesthetics";  these,  making  use  of 
our  hours  of  leisure,  satisfy  feeling  and  taste  in  the 
disinterested  enjoyment  of  literature  and  art. 

UWe  can  see  at  once  what  will  be  the  education 
nstructed  in  answer  to  this  conception  of  life,  —  a 
positive  and  practical  education,  planned  for  indus- 


HERBERT  SPENCER  29 

trial  and  business  people,  in  which  a  liberal  culture 
of  human  faculties  enters  only  by  way  of  comple- 
ment; where  instruction  in  literature  and  the  fine 
arts,  being  left  to  the  last  place,  subject,  also,  to 
the  possibility  of  spare  time,  seem  almost  like  mere 
accessories.  The  fact  is,  that  in  the  classification 
proposed  by  Mr.  Spencer  there  is  a  gap,  —  a  serious 
omission.  The  reproach  has  been  made  against 
certain  educationists,  and  especially  against  Rous- 
seau, that  they  exaggerate  the  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual ("Phomme  en  soi"),  that  they  sacrifice  the 
useful  to  the  ideal,  and  neglect  adaptation  to  tlie 
needs  ofjife jor  gfinftrgjjmltnra  of  the  faculties.  We 
must  bring  against  Mr.  Spencer  the  opposite  re- 
proach. He  considers  the  workman,  the  artisan, 
the  father  of  the  family,  the  citizen,  but  he  altogether 
forgets  human  personality.  It  seems  as  if  he  were 
not  concerned  at  all  about  those  inner  activities 
which  make  a  man  what  he  is,  which  develop  his 
intellectual  and  moral  qualities,  his  conscience,  his 
intelligence,  his  feeling,  and  his  will.  His  pupil 
would  be  stuffed  with  the  knowledge  appropriate  to 
the  needs  of  a  useful  life,  but  we  do  not  find  him 
prepared  for  the  obligations  of  morality.  He  would 
live  longer  than  other  men.  He  would  succeed  better 
in  business  affairs.  But  how  would  he  learn  to  be 
good,  wise,  prudent  in  judgment,  strong-willed,  — 


30  HERBERT  SPENCER 

In  short,  a  true  man?  We  ought  not  to  say,  pos- 
sibly, that  he  would  be  nothing  but  a  machine 
adapted  to  the  satisfaction  of  material  and  egoistic 
needs  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  to  the  re- 
quirements of  family  and  social  life.  But  he  would 
certainly  not  have  been  educated  in  himself;  nothing 
would  have  been  done  to  insure  personal  develop- 
ment and  perfection. 

In  his  list  of  human  activities,  therefore,  we  shall 
ask  Mr.  Spencer  to  insert  in  the  second  place,  imme- 
diately after  those  which  have  regard  to  the  care  of 
the  body,  activities  which  train  the  moral  sense, 
which  form  the  personality  in  its  full  strength  and 
dignity;  the  activities  which  every  man,  however 
humble  and  poor,  employs,  and  by  employing,  de- 
velops his  conscience,  his  heart,  and  character.  If 
this  correction  is  accepted,  the  whole  plan  of  life  and._ 
in  consequence,  of  education  will  be  changed ;  for 
literature  will  then  claim  higher  rank  than  the  humfble 
place  conceded  to  it  by  Mr.  Spencer, — merely  a  means 
of  recreation,  of  distraction,  an  addition  to  a  life 
the  needs  of  which  are  already  satisfied;  it  will 
demand  a  place  preserved  for  it  by  the  side  of  the 
sciences,  as  a  means  of  general  education.  ^ 

This  reservation  granted,  —  and  it  is,  however^ 
of  first  importance,  and  in  proportion  as  we  follow 
out  the  subject  in  detail  its  force  becomes  apparent, — 


HERBERT  SPENCER  31 

everything  else  in  this  part  of  Mr.  Spencer's  demon- 
stration deserves  praise.  The  whole  statement  of 
it  is  eminently  clear;  he  establishes  the  imperative 
need  of  scientific  instruction  to  enlighten  and  direct 
those  human  activities  which  he  desired  to  enter  in 
his  list.  His  luminous  exposition  should  here  be 
quoted  word  for  word% 

In  the  first  place,  in  regard  to  preservation  of 
the  individual,  it  is  easy  to  show  that  a  man  is  ex- 
posed to  great  dangers  if  he  has  not  studied  physi- 
ology and  is  unacquainted  with  the  laws  of  life.  In 
this  part  of  education,  "Nature"  herself,  for  that 
matter,  assumes  the  chief  role.  Since  health  is,  of 
all  things,  the  most  important,  for  it  is  the  condition 
of  everything  else,  "Nature"  did  not  wish  to  leave  its 
fate  at  the  mercy  of  our  ignorance  or  stupidity;  she 
has  taken  the  duty  of  providing  for  it  into  her  own 
infallible  control.  The  sensations  with  which  "Na- 
ture "  has  provided  us, — the  necessity  of  taking  food, 
the  appetite  which  guides  even  the  baby  at  the  breast, 
the  feelings  of  cold  and  heat,  brain  fatigue, — these  all 
give  warning  of  our  needs,  or  reveal  to  us  the  perils 
that  threaten  us.  They  are  authoritative  coun- 
sellors, whose  advice  we  are  obliged  to  follow.  In 
brief,  to  quote  Mr.  Spencer:  "To  speak  teleologi- 
cally,  Nature  has  provided  efficient  safeguards  to 
health,"  vigilant  sentinels  who  mount  guard  around 


32  HERBERT  SPENCER 

our  bodies.  This  is  the  first,  but  not  the  last,  time 
that  we  find  the  philosopher  of  evolution  appealing 
to  " Nature"  as  to  a  kind  of  "Providence,"  who 
watches  over  the  interests  of  humanity.  There  is, 
then,  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  let  "Nature"  alone, 
to  respect  her  indications  and  profit  by  them :  that 
is  what  Rousseau  had  already  desired. 

But  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  add  conclusions 
drawn  by  science  to  the  instinctive  suggestions  of 
Nature;  it  is  in  this  that  Mr.  Spencer  continues 
and  completes  the  work  of  Rousseau.  How 
many  people  are  subject  to  chronic  illnesses 
or  to  sharp  attacks,  to  general  debility  or  to  early 
decay  and  death,  through  ignorance  of  hygienic 
precautions  and  physiological  laws !  "Our  physical 
sins,"  as  Mr.  Spencer  terms  them,  make  life  into  one 
long  mortification,  into  a  burden  or  torment,  instead 
of  it  being  the  continuous  pleasure  and  blessing  that 
it  might  be. 

We  have  nothing  to  say  against  this;  but  the 
objection  raised  above  is  disturbing,  and  it  causes 
us  to  hesitate.  Science  is  certainly  necessary  as  a 
guide  in  caring  for  our  health;  but  is  it  enough? 
Are  knowledge  and  ability  the  same  thing  ?  Above  / 
all,  are  to  know  and  to  desire  —  to  will  the  thing  — 
the  same  ?  Hygiene  instructs  us  as  to  the  physical 
ills  that  follow  imprudent  actions;  is  that  enough 


HERBERT  SPENCER  33 

to  inspire  the  will  and  the  strength  to  avoid  such 
actions  if  they  are  pleasant?  In  order  to  resist 
pleasurable  temptations,  the  injurious  effects  of 
which  are  well  known  to  us,  is  it  not  indispensable 
that  we  should  be  armed  with  more  than  scientific 
knowledge,  that  we  should  be  at  least  imbued  with 
the  feeling  of  our  dignity  as  human  beings?  Does 
not  Mr.  Spencer  himself,  indeed,  acknowledge  hi 
his  chapter  on  " Moral  Education"  (by  a  contradic- 
tion to  which  reference  has  already  been  made,1)  that 
knowledge  is  not  conscience,  much  less  is  it  will. 

Science,  then,  is  necessary  to  aid  nature  in  its 
task  of  personal  preservation ;  it  is  not  less  necessary 
to  insure  success  in  the  whole  field  of  professional 
enterprise,  and  also  to  provide  every  man  with  the 
means  of  gaining  his  livelihood.  We  need  not  dwell 
upon  this;  Mr.  Spencer  has  here  no  opponents. 
Who  would  desire  to  dispute  with  him  the  indis- 
pensability  of  technical  instruction;  that  the  pro- 
duction and  distribution  of  wealth  —  that  is  to  say, 
industrial  and  commercial  operations  —  are  rendered 
possible  only  by  a  knowledge  of  physics,  biology, 
or  other  sciences;  that  both  the  producer  and  the 
merchant  require  mathematics ;  that  the  surveyor, 
architect,  and  mason  alike  depend  on  geometry; 
the  builder,  the  mechanic,  and  the  agriculturist  on 

1  Mr.  Bertrand,  L'Enseignement  integral,    p.  198. 


34  HERBERT  SPENCER 

chemistry;  in  fact,  that  " there  is  hardly  a  single 
industry  nowadays  which  does  not  rely  upon 
chemical  science.  .  .  ."  As  Arago  said,  in  1836, 
"  Sugar  is  not  made  from  beet-root  by  fine  words," 
and  "soda  is  not  extracted  from  sea- water  by  Alex- 
andrines." No  unbeliever  or  opponent  is  found  to 
detract  from  the  praise  of  science  for  the  services 
which  it  renders  to  material  interests.  Everybody 
acknowledges  that  it  has  inspired  innumerable  in- 
ventions and  modes  of  application  which  have 
transformed  the  world;  that  it  has  been  able  to 
provide  the  peasantry  with  comforts  formerly  even 
out  of  the  reach  of  kings.  For  these  reasons,  scien- 
tific teaching,  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  various 
professions,  should  spread  by  leaps  and  bounds;  all 
the  industrial  nations,  and  especially  Germany,  under- 
stand its  importance.  But  is  it  true  that  it  answers 
to  all  human  needs?  Amid  the  varied  positive  and 
practical  branches  of  education  which  Mr.  Spencer, 
with  justifiable  enthusiasm,  recommends  to  us,  does 
he  not  forget  something  ?  Education  itself.  Science 
has  analyzed  the  physical  forces  and  yoked  them 
to  man's  service.  But,  although  science  has  suc- 
ceeded in  setting  in  motion  and  launching  across 
space  its  steam-engines  and  electrical  machines,  is 
it  fully  proved  that  it  is  also  able  to  develop  and 
train  the  moral  forces  without  which  mankind, 


HERBERT  SPENCER  35 

despite  his  fulness  of  material  wealth  and  the  ocean 
of  machines  swelling  around  him,  will  remain  hi 
a  lower  and  more  degraded  condition  than  that 
for  which  his  destiny  had  designed  him?  4 

To  turn  to  another  question,  Is  Mr.  Spencer  suffi- 
ciently concerned  about  knowing  whether  instruc- 
tion hi  science  is  appropriate  for  every  age,  whether 
it  can  be  really  grasped  by  young  children?  There 
are  some  difficult  sciences,  and  in  all  the  sciences 
some  parts  are  obscure.  Will  the  mind  of  the  child 
be  able  to  understand  them,  especially  if,  as  hi 
Mr.  Spencer's  scheme,  he  is  not  prepared  for  it  by  a 
previous  general  culture?  J.  S.  Mill's  suggestions 
hi  the  lecture  from  which  we  have  already  quoted 
are  surely  much  sounder:  "Special  knowledge  is 
sought  after  only  by  a  certain  number  of  young 
men,  and  it  is  only  when  they  have  completed  their 
education,  properly  so  called,  that  they  should  be 
permitted  to  enter  upon  it.  The  good  or  bad  use 
which  they  will  make  of  each  knowledge  will  depend 
chiefly  on  their  mental  character,  and  character 
can  be  formed  only  by  general  education.  Before 
being  lawyers,  doctors,  merchants,  or  manufacturers, 
they  must  be  men.  .  .  ."  In  this  matter  it  is 
J.  Stuart  Mill  who  is  in  agreement  with  Rousseau. 

While  a  man  is  acquiring  the  professional  knowl- 
edge which  will  permit  him  to  succeed  in  business, 


36  HERBERT  SPENCER 

he  is  not  working  only  for  himself,  he  is  assur- 
ing a  competence  for  his  family.  But  the  care 
of  a  family  demands  more  than  that  the  future 
father  and  mother  have  been  initiated  into  the  art 
of  training  children.  In  present-day  education  no 
steps  are  taken  to  prepare  the  parents  to  be  the  first 
educators  of  their  sons  and  daughters.  With  the 
touch  of  humour  characteristic  of  Mr.  Spencer,  he 
writes:  "If  by  some  strange  chance  not  a  vestige 
of  us  descended  to  the  remote  future  save  a  pile  of 
our  school-books  or  some  college  examination  papers, 
we  may  imagine  how  puzzled  an  antiquary  of  the 
period  would  be  on  finding  in  them  no  sign  that  the 
learners  were  ever  likely  to  be  parents.  This 
must  have  been  the  curriculum  for  their  celibates, 
we  may  fancy  him  concluding.  I  perceive  here  an 
elaborate  preparation  for  many  things,  especially  for 
reading  the  books  of  extinct  nations  and  of  coexist- 
ing nations  (from  which,  indeed,  it  seems  clear  that 
these  people  had  very  little  worth  reading  in  their 
own  tongue),  but  I  find  no  reference  whatever  to 
the  bringing  up  of  children.  They  could  not  have 
been  so  absurd  as  to  omit  all  training  for  this  gravest 
of  responsibilities.  Evidently,  then,  this  was  the 
school  course  of  one  of  their  monastic  orders." 

Mr.  Spencer  will  not  be  to  blame  if  things  are  not 
different  in  the  future.    No  question  lies  nearer  his 


HERBERT  SPENCER  37 

heart.  "Is  it  not  monstrous,"  he  says,  "that  the 
fate  of  a  new  generation  should  be  left  to  the  chances 
of  unreasoning  custom,  impulse,  fancy,  —  joined 
with  the  suggestions  of  ignorant  nurses  and  the  prej- 
udiced counsel  of  grandmothers?"  But  we  must 
repeat  again  and  again,  before  men  will  listen,  that 
a  study  of  the  natural  laws  of  the  development  of 
body  and  mind  is  the  first  duty  of  parents.  Mr. 
James  Sully  will  say  the  same  thing  thirty  years 
after  Mr.  Spencer  in  his  Studies  of  Childhood.  He 
will  remind  mothers  especially  "that  it  is  indispensa- 
ble that  they  have  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  na- 
ture of  the  delicate  little  speechless  beings  to  whom 
they  have  transmitted  life,  and  should  now  give 
a  soul,"  in  order  to  lead  them  upward  along  the  path 
of  humanity.  How  many  mothers  have  responded 
to  this  appeal?  .  .  . 

The  training  of  citizens  is  no  less  obligatory  than 
the  training  of  parents.  Here,  again,  science  is  to 
be  the  teacher  —  but  which  science?  Doubtless, 
history  —  but  is  history  a  science  ?  It  does  not  ap- 
pear in  the  classification  of  the  sciences  tabulated 
by  Mr.  Spencer.  As  we  are  aware  he  distributes  the 
sciences  under  three  categories:  abstract  sciences, 
logic  and  mathematics;  abstract-concrete,  sciences, 
mechanics,  physics,  chemistry;  and,  finally,  con- 
crete sciences,  astronomy,  geology,  biology,  psy- 


38  HERBERT  SPENCER 

chology,  sociology.  In  any  case  it  cannot  be  the 
customary  history,  the  mass  of  dead  facts  taught  in 
schools  and  colleges, — a  sterile  kind  of  learning, — or 
aristocratic  history  which  wastes  our  time  in  telling 
us  incidents  from  the  life  of  monarchs  or  from  diplo- 
matic and  court  intrigues ;  nor  will  it  be  military  his- 
tory, the  history  which  enumerates  the  Fifteen  Deci- 
sive Battles  of  the  World.  Is  a  citizen  necessarily  more 
enlightened  about  his  vote  at  the  next  elections 
because  he  is  acquainted  with  affairs  of  the  past  of 
no  importance  to-day?  By  no  means.  We  may, 
if  we  will,  study  the  trivialities  of  history  from  curios- 
ity, or  for  amusement;  but  they  can  have  no  prac- 
tical influence  on  the  actions  of  our  contemporaries. 
The  history  which  is  important  in  the  past  and  pres- 
ent both  is  the  history  of  the  people,  of  their  institu- 
tions and  customs,  their  beliefs  and  laws ;  it  may  be 
described  in  a  word  as  Descriptive  Sociology,  and  it 
should  help  us  to  penetrate  into  the  inner  life  of 
social  groups,  explain  their  progress,  their  intellec- 
tual and  moral  condition  during  various  centuries, 
and  also  their  industrial  organizations,  trades,  and 
corporations;  in  short,  it  should  reveal  to  us  the 
laws  of  social  evolution. 

There  is  much  to  reply  to  this.  Can  we  agree 
with  Mr.  Spencer  that  the  history  of  military  affairs, 
of  the  great  heroic  struggles  which  have  decided  the 


HERBERT  SPENCER  39 

fate  of  whole  nations,  is  of  no  value  in  forming  the 
character  of  the  citizen  ?  Mr.  Spencer  sacrifices  here, 
as  always,  the  education  of  the  emotions  to  positive 
instruction.  His  citizen  would  be  able  to  analyze 
the  institutions  of  his  country;  but  will  he  have 
learnt  to  love  it  ?  Will  he  not  lack  the  one  thing  that 
can  make  all  knowledge,  even  the  fullest,  of  use,  — 
a  reverent  loyalty  to  the  constitution,  a  love  of 
humanity  and  patriotic  enthusiasm?  On  the  other 
hand,  how  can  we  agree  to  eliminate  from  historical 
studies  the  biography  of  great  men  and  the  narra- 
tive of  noble  deeds?  Mr.  Spencer  relies  too  much 
on  nature,  on  what  he  calls  "moral  intuitions,"  — 
a  kind  of  instinct  acquired  slowly  through  successive 
generations.  There  is,  without  doubt,  a  mysterious 
hereditary  transmission  from  parent  to  child  through 
the  blood;  but  should  there  not  be  another  kind  of 
communication  between  one  generation  and  the 
next,  also  of  value,  —  communication  based  on  con- 
scious imitation,  on  a  rational  admiration  for  fine 
examples  of  past  ages? 

Mr.  Spencer's  Education  comprises  everything 
that  is  essential  for  forming  positive  and  practical 
minds.  But  nowhere  in  the  book  is  any  concern  to 
be  found  for  the  training  of  the  emotions  and  sen- 
timents of  the  heart. 

The  final  limit  to  human  activity,  literary  and 


40  HERBERT  SPENCER 

artistic  education,  these,  under  Mr.  Spencer's  treat- 
ment, reveal  the  same  lack,  —  a  want  of  feeling  and 
inspiration.  One  must  become  an  artist  or  a  poet 
by  first  becoming  a  scholar.  This  is  no  new  paradox. 
Diderot  said  that  the  real  poet  is  a  living  encyclo- 
paedia, and  that  the  characteristic  feature  distin- 
guishing Voltaire  from  his  rivals  is  "knowledge." 
Mr.  Spencer  puts  forth  specious  arguments  to  justify 
this  position.  Since  Art  —  painting,  sculpture,  or 
poetry  —  is  only  the  representation  of  natural 
beauty,  or  of  the  inner  emotional  life,  an  artist  cannot 
succeed  in  his  work  unless  he  is  first  of  all  a  natural- 
ist or  a  psychologist.  Also,  in  order  to  forecast  his 
effects,  to  discover  the  right  tone,  an  artist  must 
realize  the  kind  of  impressions  and  emotions  which 
his  works  will  produce  in  the  minds  of  his  hearers  or 
spectators;  therefore,  on  this  side,  a  knowledge  of 
psychology  is  also  required.  Necessary  for  the 
production  of  art,  science  is  therefore  necessary 
for  its  appreciation.  And,  lastly,  there  is  not  the 
opposition  between  science  and  art  which  is  com- 
monly imagined ;  Mr.  Spencer  shows  us  in  charming 
language  that  science  is  full  of  poetry.  Think  you 
(he  says)  that  a  drop  of  water,  which  to  the  vulgar 
eye  is  but  a  drop  of  water,  loses  anything  in  the  eye 
of  a  physicist  who  knows  that  its  elements  are  held 
together  by  a  force  which,  if  suddenly  liberated, 


HERBERT  SPENCER  41 

would  produce  a  flash  of  lightning?  Think  you 
that  what  is  carelessly  looked  upon  by  the  unini- 
tiated as  a  mere  snowflake  does  not  suggest  higher 
associations  to  one  who  has  seen  through  a  micro- 
scope the  wondrously  varied  and  elegant  forms  of 
snow  crystals  ?  Think  you  that  the  rounded  rock, 
marked  with  parallel  scratches,  calls  up  as  much 
poetry  in  an  ignorant  mind  as  in  the  mind  of  a  geolo- 
gist, who  knows  that  over  this  rock  a  glacier  slid 
a  million  years  ago  ? 

That  science  may  be  poetry,  that  it  opens  up 
fresh  sources  of  inspiration  bursting  forth  from 
observation  of  nature,  granted!  But  whether,  in 
forming  a  poet,  science  may  be  substituted  for  liter- 
ary studies,  this  is  quite  a  different  question.  In 
any  case,  science  will  not  give  him  practice  in  the 
art  of  expressing  his  thoughts ;  neither  can  the  lyric 
poet  owe  to  science  the  peculiar  enthusiasm  with 
which  he  is  animated.  To  say  that  the  dramatic 
poet  is  a  scientist  because  he  " observes"  the  ways 
of  men  is  to  play  with  words,  for  his  observation  is 
in  no  way  scientific.  However,  let  us  stop  here. 
If  there  is  a  "soul  of  truth"  amid  Mr.  Spencer 's 
errors,  we  must  admit  that  it  is  well  hidden  under 
sophistical  exaggeration.  How  can  it  be  main- 
tained seriously,  for  instance,  that  musical  com- 
positions are  bad  only  when  they  lack  truth  —  in 


42  HERBERT  SPENCER 

other  words,  science?  /Science,  yes;  but  science 
based  on  artistic  initiative,  on  a  study  of  musical 
masterpieces,  and,  above  all,  on  warmth  of  feeling 
and  glowing  inspiration;  and  these  have  nothing 
hi  common  with  the  inductions  and  deductions  of 
pure  science. 

Above  all,  objection  should  be  made  to  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's reduction  of  aesthetic  culture  to  the  place  as- 
signed to  it:  "Postponing  them  (literature  and  the 
Fine  Arts),  as  we  do  to  things  that  bear  more  vitally 
on  human  welfare,  ...  we  yield  to  none  in  the 
value  we  attach  to  aesthetic  culture  and  its  pleasures. 
Without  painting,  sculpture,  music,  poetry,  and  the 
emotions  produced  by  natural  beauty  of  every  kind, 
life  would  lose  half  its  charm.  .  .  ."  He  is  none  the 
less  convinced  that  in  education,  as  in  life,  taste  may 
dictate  our  occupations  during  leisure  hours  only. 
Leisure  hours  will  doubtless  increase  when  the  forces 
of  nature  have  been  completely  subdued  and  ren- 
dered useful  to  man.  Renan  also  dreamt  of  a  time 
when  the  progress  of  science  would  become,  as  it 
were,  "the  redemption  of  the  workman";  when, 
relieved  of  material  cares,  humanity  would  be  free 
to  pursue  sesthetic  pleasures.  The  same  idea  had 
been  expressed  by  Richard  Wagner  already  in  1850, 
in  his  book  on  Art  and  Revolution.  The  error  con- 
sists in  confining  art  and  literature  within  a  purely 


UNIVERSITY 


OF 


. 


.EK  1 


recreative  sphere.  Mr.  Spencer  looks  ''upon  them 
only  as  the  "  efflorescence"  of  civilized  life.  In 
consequence,  we  must  concern  ourselves  with  them 
only  hi  the  last  place,  as  the  gardener  with  the 
flower  of  a  plant  when  he  has  provided  for  the  growth 
of  its  roots,  stem,  and  leaves.  On  the  contrary,  we 
hold  that  aesthetic  culture  is  indispensable  hi  order 
to  provide  for  the  human  plant  its  substance,  —  the 
moral  nutrition  which  it  needs.  ^Esthetics  are  not 
merely  the  crown  of  civilization  ;  they  are  its  founda- 
tion, one  of  the  essential  principles  of  intellectual  life. 
So  far,  Mr.  Spencer  has  considered  science  only 
as  the  guide  hi  life,  as  the  light  illuminating  the  path 
of  mankind.  But  he  knows  well  that  the  question 
is  not  exhausted,  and  that  objections  arise.  To 
answer  these,  it  would  be  necessary  to  prove  that 
science  is  not  simply  a  store  of  useful  knowledge  ; 
that  it  is  educative  as  well  as  instructive;  that  it 
"forms"  the  mind  as  much  as  it  "informs"  it;  that 
while  instructing,  it  also  disciplines  the  mind.  This 
is  the  crucial  point,  and  we  must  acknowledge  that 
our  author  treats  it  somewhat  lightly.  He  is  as 
moderate  and  brief  hi  explaining  this  second  part 
of  the  question  as  he  roamed  at  ease  over  the  first. 
"We  are  obliged,"  he  says,  "  to  treat  this  division  of 
our  subject  with  comparative  brevity;"  and  he  de- 
votes to  it,  in  fact,  only  five  or  six  pages.  When  he 


44  HERBERT  SPENCER 

adds  that  "  happily  no  very  lengthened  treatment  of 
it  is  needed,"  we  are  far  from  sharing  his  opinion;  it 
is  the  chief  question,  —  a  question  important  above 
all  others. 

The  general  reason  expressed  by  Mr.  Spencer  to 
justify  his  faith  in  the  educative  value  of  science 
gives  a  shock  of  surprise.  It  is  an  argument  a  priori, 
drawn  from  the  finality  of  Nature  and  its  wise  and 
benevolent  intentions.  "We  may  be  quite  sure/' 
he  says,  "that  the  acquirement  of  those  classes  of 
facts  which  are  most  useful  for  regulating  conduct 
involves  a  mental  exercise  best  fitted  for  strengthen- 
ing the  faculties."  To  think  otherwise  "would  be 
utterly  contrary  to  the  beautiful  economy  of  Nature." 
In  other  words,  " Nature"  knows  very  well  what  it 
is  doing;  it  cannot  make  a  mistake  and  form  a 
plan  useful  and  good  for  one  thing,  useless  and  bad 
for  another.  Let  us  admit  that  this  is  pushing  op- 
timism and  teleological  faith  a  long  way.  It  makes 
a  false  use  of  Nature,  treating  it  as  an  infallible  and 
foreseeing  power,  wholly  concerned  in  economizing 
the  time  and  strength  of  man.  Mr.  Spencer  per- 
sonifies, almost  deifies,  Nature  —  we  note  that  he 
writes  the  word  always  with  a  capital  letter.  We 
must  not  be  too  astonished  at  this.  The  doctrine 
of  evolution,  despite  its  positivist  aspect,  is  a  phi- 
losophy which  in  reality  attributes  the  highest  degree 


HERBERT  SPENCER  45 

of  intelligence  to  things  in  themselves;  it  asserts 
that  Nature,  by  its  unconscious,  but  sure  and  regular, 
work,  produces  gradually  an  ordered,  harmonious 
world.  It  has  no  preestablished  and  predetermined 
harmony,  such  as  that  of  the  old  philosophy ;  but  it 
has  a  harmony  in  process  of  becoming,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  act  of  organization,  which  is  being  realized  from 
day  to  day,  —  a  work  carried  on  ceaselessly  by  a 
mysterious  and  unknowable  intelligence  which  pre- 
sides over  the  destiny  of  the  world. 

Mr.  Spencer,  however,  is  not  satisfied  with  this 
expression  of  faith  in  Nature  for  that  would  be 
running  away  from  a  difficulty.  He  wants  to  discuss 
it  and  "pass  on  to  proofs."  But  the  discussion  is 
short  and  his  proofs  insufficient.  His  demonstra- 
tion amounts  to  this:  that  the  study  of  science 
can  exercise  memory  and  judgment  as  much  as  the 
study  of  language.  If  it  were  simply  a  question  of 
learning  names  and  faces  by  heart,  it  is  evident 
that  the  sciences  would  present  the  child  with  a 
field  as  vast,  and  perhaps  more  vast,  than  that  of 
language.  Let  us  take,  for  example,  natural  science. 
Simple  and  compound  bodies,  the  stars  of  the  Milky 
Way,  the  three  hundred  and  twenty  kinds  of  plants, 
the  two  million  forms  of  animal  life  —  these  can 
furnish  the  memory  of  a  pupil  as  well  or  better  than 
the  dates  of  history  or  the  thousands  of  words  of 


46  HERBERT  SPENCER 

any  language  you  like  to  mention.  But,  what 
would  the  child  gain  by  the  change?  It  is  true 
that,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  science  ranks 
above  literature  as  an  instrument  for  cultivating 
judgment,  and  weakness  of  judgment  is  a  universal 
evil.  But  it  is  by  no  means  generally  accepted  that 
exercises  in  translation  —  an  essential  part  of  the 
study  of  language,  whether  living  or  dead  —  do  not 
tend  to  cultivate  judgment  and  reason.  Could  it 
be  maintained  that  science  by  its  personal  observa- 
tion, its  demand  for  experiment  and  verification,  and 
its  rigorous  use  of  demonstration  frees  the  mind,  and 
that  literature,  on  the  other  hand,  enslaves  it  ?  The 
dictionary  imperatively  declares  "the  word  means 
so  and  so";  the  grammar  states  that  "this  is  the 
rule";  thus  the  study  of  language  increases  a  ser- 
vile respect  for  authority.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
science,  at  least  the  part  of  it  which  can  be  taught 
to  little  children,  has  also  its  rules  and  axioms 
and  its  yet  more  absolute  formula  dictata.  More- 
over, the  study  of  literature  is  not  limited  to  the  study 
of  words  and  of  the  laws  of  syntax ;  must  we  reckon 
for  nothing  the  beautiful  thoughts  and  noble  senti- 
ments that  we  gather  from  the  works  of  great  writers, 
and  all  those  eternal  truths  which  help  to  liberate 
the  mind  and  heart  ? 
In  this  very  controversial  question  of  the  educa- 


HERBERT  SPENCER  47 

live  value  of  science,  there  is  one  specially  interest- 
ing point :  the  sciences  are  very  different  in  aim  and 
method,  and  they  cannot,  therefore,  claim  to  exert 
the  same  influence  in  mental  discipline,  granted  that 
they  exert  any  influence  at  all.  Mr.  Spencer  has 
examined  this  delicate  subject,  not  in  Education, 
but  in  a  book  published  a  few  years  afterwards, 
Introduction  to  Social  Science,  1873.  He  there  main- 
tains that  it  is  only  through  science  that  we  can  ac- 
quire good  habits  of  thought;  but  he  recognizes 
that  the  sciences  differ,  and  that  each  of  them  tends 
to  discipline  the  mind  in  a  unique  and  limited  sense. 
He  does  not  conceal  the  dangerous  effect  of  every 
exclusive  study.  "Men  who  have  a  great  aptitude 
for  observation  are  rarely  clever  in  generalization," 
and  reciprocally.  There  is  antagonism  between 
perception  and  reason.  Any  intellectual  discipline 
whatever,  when  it  is  abused,  overdevelops  certain 
faculties  and  leaves  others  to  atrophy.  The  ab- 
stract sciences,  for  instance,  make  plain  the  neces- 
sary relationship  of  cause  and  effect,  of  conclusion 
and  premises;  but  there  is  a  reverse  side  to  this 
medal:  a  mind  trained  in  mathematics,  with  this 
peculiar  bent,  is  not  skilled  in  unravelling  practical 
problems,  with  their  contingent  circumstances. 
Well  practised  in  the  solution  of  questions,  the 
premises  of  which  are  simple  and  clearly  defined, 


48  HERBERT  SPENCER 

the  mathematician  becomes  bewildered  and  loses 
his  way  amid  complex  and  uncertain  concrete 
realities.  We  must  find  the  necessary  corrective 
for  the  limitations  and  defects  of  mathematical 
training  in  other  sciences.  Mr.  Spencer,  continuing 
his  analysis,  meets  finally  with  a  like  effect  in  every 
science.  .  .  .  The  chief  inference  to  be  drawn  from 
this  is  surely  that  to  form  an  all-round  mind  we 
must  not  instruct  hi  one  science  only,  we  must 
teach  all  sciences  in  order  that  the  special  tendencies 
developed  by  one  may  be  corrected  by  another. 
Now  to  do  this  is  impossible.  Life  is  too  short  for 
a  man  to  cover  all  the  studies.  "What  a  perfect 
woman  I  should  become,"  said  Madame  Sevigne,  "  if 
I  were  to  live  two  hundred  years."  How  wonderful 
would  be  the  intellect  of  a  man  who  had  the  time 
to  learn  all  that  might  be  taught  him!  Since  our 
life  is  "but  a  span,"  we  are  compelled  to  choose,  and 
even  Mr.  Spencer  appears  to  be  perplexed  what  to 
choose. 

At  times,  paying  no  regard  to  the  shortness  of  life, 
and  hence  of  study,  he  appears  inclined  to  demand 
from  students  efforts  that  are  superhuman,  and 
that  aspire  to  compass  the  entire  field  of  knowledge. 
In  this  connection  he  draws  an  ingenious  analogy: 
Let  us  imagine  (he  says)  a  room  splendidly  decorated 
and  lit  by  only  one  candle,  which  is  placed  in  a  cor- 


HERBERT  SPENCER  49 

ner;  it  can  illuminate  only  one  bit  of  the  decoration; 
all  the  rest  is  plunged  in  darkness.  Let  us  imagine, 
next,  that  a  hundred  electric  lamps  are  suddenly 
lit,  and  that  they  illuminate  the  whole  of  the  vast 
chamber  and  everything  in  it;  here  we  have  a  pic- 
ture of  the  spectacle  presented  by  nature  to  an  in- 
tellect partially  cultivated,  on  the  one  hand;  on  the 
other,  to  a  mind  in  which  shines  the  light  of  all  the 
sciences. 

This  picture  is  fine,  but  it  does  not  correspond,  in 
the  intellectual  breadth  it  presupposes,  to  the  modest 
results  contemplated  by  the  pedagogy  of  Mr.  Spen- 
cer. The  scientific  instruction  extolled  by  him  is, 
indeed,  very  far  from  what  we  understand  as  an 
" all-round  education."  It  is  true  every  one,  merely 
to  keep  himself  in  good  health  and  fulfil  his  duties 
as  parent  and  citizen,  is  urged  to  study  physiology, 
psychology,  and  also  elementary  sociology.  But 
beyond  these  subjects,  required  generally,  there  is 
for  each  student  only  a  partial  initiation  into  one 
restricted  domain  of  science.  If  men  were  obliged 
later  to  follow  all  professions,  one  after  another,  it 
would  doubtless  be  necessary  to  cover  the  whole 
field  of  science ;  but,  since  he  can  have  only  one  trade 
at  a  time,  he  is  called  upon  to  examine  only  the 
knowledge  that  has  gathered  about  his  special  occu- 
pation. In  this  way  Mr.  Spencer,  who  introduced 


50  HERBERT  SPENCER 

himself  as  an  apostle  and  a  somewhat  ambitious 
apostle  of  universality  in  scientific  instruction,  at 
the  end  of  his  discussion  turns  out  to  be  a  rather 
ordinary  advocate  of  professional  education. 

In  the  last  place,  in  view  of  the  probable  effects 
of  an  education  purely  scientific,  and  which  could 
be  beneficial  to  the  intellect  only  if  it  covered  all 
sciences,  —  an  impossibility  for  adults,  and  still 
more  so  for  youths,  —  and  since  such  an  education 
is,  perforce,  partial  and  restricted,  and  hence  will 
develop  certain  faculties  to  the  injury  of  others, 
are  we  not  justified  in  questioning  whether  the  best 
intellectual  discipline  may  not  be  expected  from 
a  flexible  and  varied  plan  of  studies,  —  one  in  which 
fair  scope,  but  not  the  whole  field,  is  granted  to 
science,  and  where  literature  keeps  its  legitimate 
influence?  By  thus  calling  to  its  aid  manifold 
instruments  of  instruction,  the  teaching  process  is 
able  to  arouse  the  whole  range  of  higher  intellec- 
tual faculties:  it  is  able  to  exercise  the  judgment 
as  much  as  the  memory,  the  imagination  as  much 
as  the  reason;  and,  as  J.  S.  Mill  has  said,  our  pupils 
will  at  the  end  know  not  only  their  chief  occupation 
thoroughly,  they  will  know  also  something  of  all 
subjects  interesting  to  humanity  and  which  are  able 
to  assist  in  the  development  of  a  perfect  mind. 


Ill 

THE  general  principle  of  education  has  been  set 
forth;  it  is  the  acquisition  of  scientific  knowledge. 
It  now  remains  to  be  seen  how  Mr.  Spencer  applies 
this  to  education  in  its  intellectual,  physical,  and 
moral  aspects.1  In  the  chapter  devoted  to  intellec- 
tual education,  three  parts  may  be  distinguished: 
a  very  keen  criticism  of  the  old  education,  an  exami- 
nation of  past  progress,  and,  lastly,  a  brief  summing 
up  of  new  methods  and  of  some  of  their  forms  of 
application. 

Mr.  Spencer's  fire  and  sword  shine  most  brightly 
hi  criticism.  The  positive  statements  lack  definite- 
ness,  and  reveal  the  author's  lack  of  professional 
experience ;  he  borrows  the  greater  part  of  his  ideas 
from  Pestalozzi,  and  from  further  back  than  Pesta- 
lozzi,  from  Rousseau. 

Historians  of  education  are  indebted  to  Mr. 
Spencer  for  certain  general  considerations  as  inter- 

1  Mr.  Spencer  has  relegated  the  discussion  of  physical  education 
to  the  end  of  his  book.  By  good  right  it  would  have  been  more 
logical  to  have  begun  with  it. 

51 


52  HERBERT  SPENCER 

esting  as  they  are  sound.  He  fully  established  the 
truth  that  there  are  close  relationships  between 
the  social,  political,  religious,  and  even  economic 
conditions  which  distinguish  a  country  at  any  period, 
and  the  systems  of  education  which  are  then  pre- 
ferred in  it.  When  men  received  their  creed  and 
its  interpretations  from  an  infallible  authority 
deigning  no  explanations,  it  was  natural  that  the 
teaching  of  children  should  be  purely  dogmatic. 
While  " believe  and  ask  no  questions"  was  the 
maxim  of  the  church,  it  was  fitly  the  maxim  of  the 
school.  Along  with  political  despotism,  stern  in 
its  inexorable  commands,  ruling  by  force  of  terror, 
visiting  trifling  crimes  with  death,  and  implacable 
in  its  vengeance  on  the  disloyal,  there  necessarily 
grew  up  an  academic  discipline  similarly  harsh,  — 
a  discipline  of  multiplied  injunctions  and  blows  for 
every  breach  of  them,  a  discipline  of  unlimited 
autocracy  upheld  by  rods  and  ferules  and  the 
black  hole.  But  these  things  have  changed,  in 
proportion  as  the  spirit  of  liberty  has  entered  into 
the  church  and  into  politics.  We  are  no  longer 
living  in  an  age  when,  "  acting  on  the  principle  of  the 
greatest  amount  of  suffering/7  men  imagined  that 
the  more  pleasures  they  refused  the  more  virtuous 
they  were;  and  when,  in  consequence,  in  a  mood 
of  austere  asceticism,  they  deemed  essential  an 


HERBERT  SPENCER  53 

education  that  opposed  the  wishes  of  children  and 
nipped  hi  the  bud  their  spontaneous  activity  as 
much  as  possible.  We  are  now  far  from  thinking 
that  natural  inclinations  are  diabolical  temptations. 
Lastly,  even  economic  ideas  are  connected  in  some 
way  or  other  with  the  ruling  educational  theories. 
The  school  prejudice  that  the  mind  of  the  child  can 
be  formed  to  order  at  will,  under  a  control  the  de- 
tails of  which  are  minutely  regulated,  corresponded 
to  a  commercial  system  of  protection  and  prohibition. 
But  with  free  trade,  causing  barriers  set  up  against 
international  relationships  to  fall,  the  chains  which 
bound  the  liberty  of  the  child  and  separated  the 
pupil  from  the  master  have  also  been  broken. 

But  more  than  all  the  wrong  notions  which, 
through  being  generally  accepted,  have  worked  mis- 
chief in  education,  there  is,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer, 
a  tendency,  as  ancient  as  the  world  itself,  which 
explains  the  long,  slow  routine  that  education  has 
pursued, — the  tendency  to  prefer  the  pleasant  to 
the  useful.  A  taste  for  ornament  preceded  the 
adoption  of  dress ;  of  this  Mr.  Spencer  sought  proofs 
amongst  savage  races.  The  Indian  woman  of  the 
Orinoco,  who  does  not  hesitate  to  go  out  of  her  hut 
naked,  would  not  consent  to  appear  hi  public  with- 
out first  painting  herself.  The  Red  Indian  bears 
the  sharpest  pain  joyfully  hi  order  to  be  beautifully 


54  HERBERT  SPENCER 

tattooed.  .  .  .  This  taste  for  ornament  passed 
from  bodily  decoration  to  mental  acquisitions. 
Men  desired  intellectual  brilliance  before  common 
sense.  Talents  that  give  pleasure  have  been  pre- 
ferred to  those  that  are  of  use.  Studies  that  win 
social  success,  establish  worldly  power,  or  form  brill- 
iant wits  have  been  placed  above  solid  and  prac- 
tical knowledge.  We  have,  so  to  speak,  fashioned 
ornamental  rather  than  useful  members  of  society. 
We  have  aspired  rather  to  "appear"  than  to  "be." 
Hence  a  kind  of  superficial  education,  which  has 
omitted  essential  things  whilst  insisting  on  futilities, 
on  empty  and  superficial  knowledge,  i 

Darwin  accused  English  schools  in  the  middle  of 
the  last  century  of  narrowing  the  curriculum  too 
much,  of  paying  too  much  attention  to  instruction 
in  classics,  of  exercising  only  the  memory,  and,  lastly, 
that  the  effect  of  this  purely  formal  instruction  was 
to  cramp  the  mind,  because  it  neglected  studies 
which,  by  appealing  to  observation  and  reason, 
arouse  curiosity  and  interest.  Mr.  Spencer  sounds 
the  same  alarms,  expressing  them  yet  more  fully. 
He  does  not  approve  of  any  of  the  traditional  ways 
or  practices  customary  in  a  classical  curriculum. 
We  have  already  heard  what  he  thought  of  history: 
a  mass  of  "gossip"  about  dead  people,  containing 
nothing  of  greater  interest  than  "tittle-tattle" 


HERBERT  SPENCER  55 

about  living  people.  Geography  he  called  a  "dead 
thing."  He  will  not  hear  of  learning  lessons  by 
heart,  and  Rousseau  would  have  rejoiced  at  the 
attack  which  his  successor  makes  against  books. 
"We  forget,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "that  the  function 
of  books  is  merely  'supplementary7;  that  they  are 
only  an  indirect  means  of  gaining  knowledge,  and 
that  we  should  resort  to  them  only  when  direct 
means  fail  us.  To  read,"  said  he  again,  "is  to  see 
by  proxy;"  it  is  better  to  see  for  oneself,  and  to 
observe  life  and  nature  with  one's  own  eyes  than 
through  the  eyes  and  ideas  of  other  people.  A 
pupil  will  open  a  book  only  "when  his  acquaintance 
with  the  objects  and  processes  of  the  household  and 
the  fields  is  becoming  tolerably  exhaustive.  ..." 
It  is,  however,  when  he  opposes  the  study  of 
languages  that  Mr.  Spencer  makes  use  of  the  sharp- 
est weapons  of  his  caustic  criticism.  Note  that  he 
is  no  more  favourable  to  living  than  to  dead  lan- 
guages. He  sees  in  the  continuance  of  Latin  and 
Greek  merely  an  effect  of  custom  and  irreflective 
imitation.  Men  dress  their  children's  minds  as  they 
do  their  bodies,  in  the  prevailing  fashion.  As  the 
Orinoco  Indian  —  an  authority  frequently  cited 
by  Mr.  Spencer  —  puts  on  paint  before  leaving  his 
hut,  not  with  a  view  to  any  direct  benefit,  but  be- 
cause he  would  be  ashamed  to  appear  without  it, 


56  HERBERT  SPENCER 

so  a  boy's  drilling  in  Latin  and  Greek  is  insisted  upon, 
not  because  of  their  intrinsic  value,  but  that  he  may 
not  be  disgraced  by  being  found  ignorant  of  them; 
that  he  may  have  the  education  of  a  gentleman. 
In  this  bantering  vein  he  adds,  "We  are  guilty  of 
something  like  a  platitude  when  we  say  that  through- 
out his  after  career,  a  boy,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
applies  his  Latin  and  Greek  to  no  practical  purpose ; 
...  if  he  occasionally  vents  a  Latin  quotation  or 
alludes  to  a  Greek  myth,  it  is  less  to  throw  light  on 
the  topic  in  hand  than  for  the  sake  of  effect." 

It  is  impossible  to  banish  Latinism  and  Hellenism 
more  summarily.  Moreover,  in  the  eyes  of  certain 
utilitarian  positivists,  the  whole  of  literature  is  held 
of  little  value,  and  regarded  with  suspicion.  Con- 
dor cet,  their  forerunner,  wrote :  "  Were  a  hundred 
men  of  mediocre  ability  to  write  verse  and  culti- 
vate literature  and  languages,  nothing  would  be 
gained;  but  if  twenty  were  to  occupy  themselves 
in  observing  and  experimenting,  their  work  would 
be  actually  useful."  It  is  in  the  same  way  that 
Mr.  Spencer  is  vexed  that  we  neglect  science  and 
waste  time  in  reading  poetry  and  romances.  He 
admits  literature  only  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure 
it  may  afford.  It  is  a  mere  amusement,  and  possibly 
he  would  sacrifice  it  altogether,  were  he  not  arrested 
by  the  pleasant  idea  that,  without  literary  studies, 


HERBERT  SPENCER  57 

conversation,  lacking  nourishment,  would  grow 
poor  and  feeble,  and  writers  would  not  know  where 
to  look  for  metaphors. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  reply  to  these  unfair 
exaggerations.  Let  us  only  say  that  Mr.  Spencer 
did  not  convince  his  own  countrymen,  seeing  that 
J.  S.  Mill  gave  utterance  a  few  years  afterwards  to 
the  admirable  defence  of  classical  literature  already 
mentioned.  In  America,  Teachers'  Meetings  have 
ventured  to  assert  that  "  Latin  is  the  crown  of 
secondary  education."  Mr.  G.  R.  Carpenter,  in  his 
book  on  The  teaching  of  the  Mother  Tongue,  acknow- 
ledges that  the  cause  for  which  he  pleads  —  classic 
studies  —  is  practically  gained,  since  the  number  of 
students  taking  Latin  is  steadily  increasing.  The 
chief  error  in  Mr.  Spencer's  statement  —  and  this 
should  be  specially  noted  —  lies  in  believing  that 
there  is  only  one  kind  of  really  useful  knowledge,  r 
In  the  competition  of  the  various  studies  where  he 
is  president,  he  is  wrong  in  desiring  to  award  a 
prize  to  only  one.  A  prize  is  merited  by  more  than 
one,  and  those  authorities  are  mistaken  also  who 
ascribe  to  literature  that  exclusive  kind  of  superi- 
ority granted  by  our  author  to  science.  It  is  a 
mistake  analogous  to  thinking  that  there  is  only 
one  form  of  secondary  instruction.  The  fact  is 
that  there  are  several ;  and  the  future  will  demand 


58  HERBERT  SPENCER 

various  courses  of  study  and  curricula  which  com- 
bine literature  and  science  in  varying  proportions, 
for  the  same  reason  that  social  life  in  the  future 
will  grow  in  complexity,  and  professions  and  trades 
become  more  and  more  specialized. 

We  should  have  liked  to  see  in  Education  a  new 
plan,  with  exact  detailed  explanations,  follow  these 
sharp  criticisms  of  the  old  curricula.  It  is  no  diffi- 
cult matter  to  assert  that  science  is  the  only  firm 
basis  for  instruction;  we  want  to  be  told  also  in 
what  order  the  various  sciences  should  be  arranged 
and  classed;  how  scientific  studies  should  be 
adapted  to  the  stages  of  child  growth.  .  .  .  Mr. 
A.  Bertrand,  the  translator  of  Education,  and  the 
most  authentic  disciple  of  its  educational  theory, 
has  attempted  to  plan  such  a  programme  in  his 
"  Four  Years'  Lycee  Course."  I  do  not  say  that  this 
course  is  satisfactory,  but  he  deserves  credit  for 
the  attempt.  As  to  Mr.  Spencer,  we  must  be  content 
with  general  statements.  He  has  not  formulated 
the  directions  for  class  room  which  we  desire;  but 
he  has  at  least  endeavoured  to  define  certain  new 
methods  which  ought  to  control  its  organization. 

We  have  at  last  emerged  from  the  period  of  intel- 
lectual inertia,  when  the  rule  of  tradition  was  un- 
disputed. That  was  an  age  of  "Unanimity  in 
ignorance";  and  while  waiting  until  the  happy 


HERBERT   SPENCER  59 

days  arrive  of  " unanimity  in  wisdom,"  we  are 
living  through  a  period  disturbed  by  discussions, 
of  "  disagreement  in  research. "  Already,  how- 
ever, although  there  can  be  as  yet  no  question  of 
establishing  an  exact  science  of  pedagogy  (this  will 
be  possible  only  when  a  rational  psychology  has 
been  constructed),  a  certain  number  of  new  tendencies 
have  happily  checked  the  old  routine.  Three  cen- 
turies after  Montaigne  said,  "To  know  by  heart  is 
not  to  know  at  all."  We  begin  to  understand  it.  We 
are  giving  heed  to  Rousseau's  dictum  —  quoted 
by  Mr.  Spencer  as  a  common  saying  —  that  one 
of  the  secrets  of  education  is  "to  know  how  to  waste 
time."  Abstractions  are  giving  way  to  concrete 
intuitions,  symbols  to  realities.  It  would  appear 
that  in  England,  as  elsewhere,  this  movement  in 
the  direction  of  reform  began  in  primary  schools. 
New  life  was  given  to  instruction  that  was  almost 
exclusively  oral  by  direct  observation  of  nature 
in  the  training  college  for  teachers  of  elementary 
schools  at  Battersea  from  the  year  1850. 

Back  to  nature  is,  in  fact,  the  distinctive  feature 
of  all  the  new  methods,  and  in  this  matter,  whatever 
Mr.  Spencer  may  imagine,  the  initiator  was  Rous- 
seau. For  the  rest,  what  does  it  matter  if  the  ap- 
peal is  to  Nature  or  to  science  ?  Are  they  not  much 
the  same?  What  is  science?  Is  it  not  nature 


60  HERBERT  SPENCER 

transmuted  into  " thought,"  the  universe  trans- 
formed into  knowledge,  nature  examined,  compre- 
hended, and  then  reflected  as  a  whole  in  the  mirror 
of  the  mind  ? 

It  is  by  following  the  natural  laws  prescribed  by 
nature  for  the  development  of  intelligence  that  we 
may  hope  to  discover  the  principles  of  intellectual 
education,  education  being  only  "the  objective  cor- 
relative of  the  subjective  development  of  human 
nature."  Hence  Mr.  Spencer  has  attempted  to 
lay  down  what  he  calls  —  and  this  is  a  favourite 
expression  of  his  —  the  "principles"  of  mental 
pedagogy.  He  distinguishes  as  many  as  seven  prin- 
ciples, but  in  reality  some  of  them  do  double  duty, 
for  his  wealth  of  analysis  is  somewhat  wasted.  In 
this  way  he  affirms  that  the  teacher,  in  course  of 
instruction,  like  the  mind  in  moving  naturally, 
should  pass  (1)  from  the  simple  to  the  complex; 
(2)  from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite;  (3)  from  the 
concrete  to  the  abstract;  (4)  from  the  empirical 
to  the  rational.  Is  not  this,  to  express  one  and  the 
same  idea  in  four  different  ways,  a  varied  inter- 
pretation of  the  great  law  of  evolution,  —  the  law 
of  movement  from  the  homogeneous  to  the  heteroge- 
neous? In  reality  all  this  amounts  to  saying  what 
no  one  calls  in  question,  —  Rousseau  had  previously 
expressed  it  in  glowing  language,  —  that  simple,  con- 


HERBERT  SPENCER  61 

crete  knowledge  derived  through  sense  experience 
ought  to  take  precedence  before  abstract  and  rational 
knowledge.  Into  the  interpretation  of  this  truth 
—  first  proclaimed  by  Rousseau  and  applied  by 
Pestalozzi  —  Mr.  Spencer  lets  slip  some  mistakes. 
For  example,  can  we  admit  that  it  is  impossible, 
and  indeed  undesirable,  to  cause  exact  ideas  to  enter 
the  child's  mind  under  the  pretext  that  the  mind 
proceeds  from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite?  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  never  too  early  to  build  up  clear 
and  exact  notions;  and  this  is  also  not  impossible 
provided  care  is  taken  to  keep  the  attention  of  the 
child  fixed  sufficiently  long  on  subjects  within  the 
range  of  his  understanding. 

Another  principle  also  heard  of  before, — Mr. 
Spencer  makes  the  acknowledgment  to  Auguste 
Comte  for  having  first  enunciated  it,  —  is  that  the 
education  of  the  child  should  be  in  harmony  with 
the  historical  development  of  the  race,  and  should 
follow  the  progress  of  civilization;  in  other  words, 
the  development  of  the  individual,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  should  be  the 
same  as  the  development  of  the  race.  Mr.  Spencer 
gives  as  reason  for  this  that,  by  virtue  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  heredity,  there  must  be  in  the  child  a  dis- 
position to  reproduce  in  brief  the  history  of  the  race. 
We  doubt  whether  much  practical  benefit  is  to  be 


62  HERBERT  SPENCER 

awaited  from  this  theory,  a  doctrine  more  ambitious 
than  sound.  Moreover,  Mr.  Spencer  exaggerates  the 
influence  of  heredity ;  he  states,  for  instance,  that  a 
child  of  French  extraction  will  remain  French,  al- 
though educated  abroad,  despite  the  evidence  prov- 
ing the  contrary,  that  the  influence  of  environment 
rapidly  stifles  the  hereditary  tendencies  of  nationali- 
ties and  races. 

His  two  last  principles,  inferences  from  those 
preceding,  are  important  in  a  different  way:  the 
principle  declaring  that  spontaneous  mental  activ- 
ity should  be  encouraged  as  far  as  is  possible,  and, 
lastly,  that  the  fitness  of  a  study  —  and  also  its  util- 
ity —  can  be  measured  by  its  attractiveness  to  the 
child. 

No  objection  can  be  raised  when,  like  Rous- 
seau and  Horace  Mann,  Mr.  Spencer  requires  the 
load  of  formal  lessons  to  be  eased.  It  is  a  fallacy 
of  the  age,  he  said,  to  educate  entirely  through 
1 '  lessons. "  We  must  instruct  as  little,  and  make  the 
child  " discover"  as  much,  as  possible.  He  must 
be  his  own  instructor,  not  an  inert  recipient  on 
whom  knowledge  is  poured;  an  active  seeker,  who 
discovers  by  observation.  These  counsels  are  ex- 
cellent, provided  we  do  not  place  too  great  depend- 
ence on  them.  We  must  not  expect  a  child  to 
"invent  geometry/7  as  Mr.  Spencer  suggests  and 


HERBERT  SPENCER  63 

Pestalozzi  also  desired.  Pascals  are  rare  in  the 
world,  and  few  could  follow  in  the  steps  of  Euclid. 
The  law  bearing  on  interesting  instruction  is  the 
most  original,  but  it  must  be  accepted  with  reserve. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  imitating  teachers  who  are 
as  kindly  as  they  are  unwise;  and  who,  in  trying 
to  make  all  instruction  easy  and  amusing,  render 
it  childish.  Nor  is  it  by  indirect  instruction,  after 
the  manner  of  Fenelon,  by  fiction  and  fable,  in  which 
the  hard  features  of  didactic  instruction  are  con- 
cealed under  pleasant  artifices;  the  interest  must 
be  sought  in  the  studies  themselves ;  it  must  be  in- 
trinsic and  stimulating  to  the  child's  nature.  The 
child  himself  will  find  it,  provided  it  is  adapted  to  his 
age  and  powers.  Do  you  wish  to  know  whether  your 
plan  of  instruction  is  good?  Examine  the  amount 
of  combined  curiosity  and  pleasure  that  it  excites  in 
the  child.  The  awakened  curiosity  and  inclination 
bear  witness  that  the  mind  of  the  child  is  ripe  for 
the  subject.  On  the  other  hand,  repugnance  shown 
for  a  science  proves  either  that  it  has  been  given  to 
the  child  too  soon,  or  by  an  objectionable  method. 
Let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  the  pleasure  accom- 
panying an  act  stimulates  its  performance;  that  is 
why  it  is  good  to  make  instruction  attractive.  It 
is  no  more  true  in  school  than  in  life  that  the  more 
one  suffers  the  better  one  is  for  it.  Intellectual 


64  HERBERT  SPENCER 

activity  is  only  truly  useful  and  fertile  when  it  is 
agreeable.  Mr.  Spencer,  however,  readily  acknow- 
ledges that  certain  of  our  faculties  do  not  always 
proceed  to  carry  out  necessary  activities  spontane- 
ously and  of  their  own  accord.  It  is  not  always 
correct  that  the  child 's  instinct  is  surer  than  the 
reason  of  the  adult.  Reason  is  sometimes  compelled 
to  impose  tasks  on  a  child  which  its  idle  tendencies 
dislike.  Therefore,  if  a  child  is  to  study  all  that  it 
ought  to  learn,  painful  efforts  must  be  demanded. 
Interest  does  not  suffice  as  sole  intellectual  induce- 
ment. Study,  like  life,  is  made  up  of  pleasure  and 
pain  commingled.  We  may  add  that  it  might  be 
a  dangerous  test  for  the  scheme  of  education  dreamt 
of  by  Mr.  Spencer  to  trust  its  application  to  the 
verdict  of  the  inclinations  of  children.  Is  it  not 
possible  that,  if  they  were  allowed  free  choice,  the 
greater  number  would  be  led  away  by  the  delights  of 
history  and  literature  stories,  and  prefer  these  to 
the  severer  charms  of  scientific  information? 

It  is  true  that  our  author  expects  to  reduce  the 
severity  of  science  remarkably  by  presenting  it 
under  the  pleasing  and  familiar  aspect  of  object 
lessons.  Object  lessons, — that  is  evidently  the 
method  most  directly  associated  with  a  system 
which  demands  that  things  be  put  before  words, 
the  acquisition  of  a  language  before  the  study  of  its 
grammar,  observation  before  reasoning,  and  also 


HERBERT  SPENCER  65 

pleasure  before  effort.  This  way  of  instruction  is 
wonderfully  fitted  to  the  nature  of  children,  who 
observe  everything  so  inquisitively.  "  Watch  the 
elder  children  coming  into  the  room,  exclaiming: 
1  Mamma,  see  what  a  curious  thing !'  'Mamma,  look 
at  this ! '  '  Mamma,  look  at  that ! '  a  habit  they  would 
continue  did  not  the  silly  mamma  tell  them  not  to 
tease  her."  Mr.  Spencer  says  this  habit  should  be 
preserved  by  teachers.  He  urges  that  the  object- 
lesson  method  be  extended  over  a  wider  range  of 
subjects,  and  the  use  of  it  continued  longer;  that 
it  is  not  a  system  arranged  solely  to  prepare  for 
sense  training,  that  it  is  valuable  even  as  introduc- 
tion to  abstract  science.  He  believes,  for  instance, 
that  geometry  could  be  taught  without  definitions 
simply  by  causing  objects  to  be  measured.  Rous- 
seau ventured  similar  innovations. 

On  another  point  the  descent  of  ideas  from  Rous- 
seau to  Spencer  is  not  less  evident.  Emile  learnt 
to  draw;  so  does  Mr.  Spencer's  pupil.  Drawing 
becomes  an  essential  element  in  education,  the  rival 
and  even  the  equal  of  writing,  and  in  a  sense  more 
useful.  Children  have  a  natural  taste  for  it,  either 
for  the  drawing  itself  or  else  for  colouring.  Mr. 
Spencer  thinks  the  mode  of  representing  objects 
preferred  by  the  young  artist  of  five  or  six  years  is 
by  means  of  colour,  that  he  only  accepts  the  pencil 
when  he  cannot  get  a  brush  and  box  of  colours. 


66  HERBERT  SPENCER 

A  box  of  colours  and  a  brush  are  the  instruments 
preferred.  .  .  .  Mr.  James  Sully,  in  his  Studies  of 
Children,  contradicts  Mr.  Spencer  on  this  point,  and 
asserts  that,  according  to  his  personal  observations, 
drawing  is  practice  before  colouring. 

To  these  reflections  on  drawing  and  object  lessons 
are  added  some  remarks  on  the  teaching  of  geom- 
etry, on  the  value  of  physical  science,  on  the  part 
played  by  intuition  and  by  experience  in  instruc- 
tion in  the  elements  of  mathematics,  —  even  the 
multiplication  table  should  be  acquired  experimen- 
tally, —  then  the  chapter  on  intellectual  education 
is  brought  all  too  quickly  to  an  end. 

Despite  its  brevity,  it  is  permeated  with  a  profound 
feeling  for  the  importance  of  early  education,  the 
only  period  that  the  author  wished  to  examine, 
and  which  he,  like  Pestalozzi,  would  begin  from 
the  cradle.  "  Whoever  has  watched  with  any 
discernment  the  wide-eyed  gaze  of  the  infant  at 
surrounding  objects,  knows  very  well  that  education 
does  begin  thus  early,  whether  we  intend  it  or  not; 
and  that  these  fingerings  and  suckings  of  everything 
it  can  lay  hold  of,  these  open-mouthed  listenings 
to  every  sound,  are  first  steps  in  the  series  which 
ends  in  the  discovery  of  unseen  planets,  the  inven- 
tion of  calculating  engines,  the  production  of  great 
paintings,  or  the  composition  of  symphonies  and 
operas." 


IV 

THERE  is  no  need  to  call  the  attention  of  English 
people  to  the  delights  of  physical  exercises;  if  any- 
thing, they  take  too  much  interest  in  outdoor  sports. 
M.  Boutmy  mentions  in  a  recent  book,  called  Essai 
d'une  psychologic  politique  du  peuple  Anglais,  a  small 
thing  which  signifies  much :  "  In  the  big  daily  papers 
of  England  sometimes  as  much  as  45  columns  are 
given  up  to  summarizing  sports,  and  only  17  re- 
served for  all  other  matters."  The  instinct  for 
activity  and  movement  lies  very  deep  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race.  To-day  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  are  the  classic  lands  of  open-air  games;  in 
France  we  only  follow  them  afar  off.  A  school,  the 
extraordinary  name  of  which  is  given  by  Mr. 
Spencer  as  " Muscular  Christians,"  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  arisen  amongst  us.  No  Frenchman 
would  have  published  such  novels  as  those  of  the 
Rev.  Charles  Kingsley,  novels  in  which  virtuous 
and  devout  heroes  unite  the  strength  of  biceps  of 
an  athlete  and  the  muscles  of  a  wrestler  at  fairs  with 
the  fervent  piety  of  a  mystic.  This  violent  education 
of  the  body,  a  tradition  belonging  to  the  English 

67 


68  HERBERT  SPENCER 

race,  deyelops  energy  of  character;  but  its  first 
effect,  naturally,  is  that  of  developing  physical 
qualities.  It  is  with  good  reason  that  M.  Maurice  de 
Fleury,  a  Frenchman,  attributes  partly  to  this  the 
difference  in  build  and  manner  of  the  two  races :  the 
Englishman  tends  to  become  tall  and  graceful; 
the  Frenchman,  short,  thickset,  and  effeminate. 

This  physical  education  is  not  simply  a  matter 
of  gymnastics  and  of  the  games  of  adolescence.  It, 
too,  begins  in  the  first  years  of  life,  and  lasts  through- 
out the  whole  of  it.  It  presupposes  suitable  diet, 
clothing,  and  a  whole  system  of  hygienic  regulations. 
Hence,  as  regards  this  subject,  the  practice  usual 
in  his  own  country  wals^sumciently  satisfactory  to 
Mr.  Spencer. 

He  contrasts  with  his  usual  force  the  care  given 
to  bringing  up  animals  with  the  indifference  and 
neglect  manifested  towards  the  art  of  educating 
children.  To  fatten  prize  pigs  for  agricultural  shows, 
to  train  a  horse  to  win  the  Derby,  to  feed  the  finest 
bulls,  —-  these  are  important  matters,  most  absorb- 
ing occupations.  At  the  dinner  table  of  a  country 
squire,  when  the  ladies  have  left  the  room,  at  the 
village  inn,  on  market  days,  or,  indeed,  after  church 
service,  these  are  prominent  topics  of  conver- 
sation, subjects  about  which  everybody  tries  to 
acquire  information,  or  at  least  to  exhibit  an  interest. 


HERBERT  SPENCER  69 

The  kinds  of  fodder,  the  nutritive  qualities  of  hay 
and  chopped  straw,  different  manures,  —  all  this  is 
discussed  and  studied  energetically.  But  who 
dreams,  I  would  ask,  of  making  inquiries  about  the 
different  foods  suitable  for  children,  the  period  it  is 
prudent  to  allow  between  meals  and  study  hours? 
A  country  gentleman  visits  his  stables,  and  cow- 
houses regularly;  when  does  he  find  time  to  go  up 
to  the  nurseries,  inspect  how  they  are  ventilated, 
and  the  food  which  is  given  to  his  children  ? 

Locke  and  Rousseau  had  already  set  a  good  ex- 
ample of  .minute  attention  to  details  in  regard  to 
hygiene  during  infancy.  But  what  in  their  case 
was  merely  a  kind  of  vague  intuition,  of  instinctive 
divination,  developed  under  Mr.  Spencer  into  very 
exact  rules,  founded  on  careful  scientific  investigation. 
He  says  that  the  business  of  looking  after  these 
matters  should  no  longer  be  left  to  "mammas  who 
have  been  taught  little,  —  languages,  music,  and  ac- 
complishments, —  aided  by  nurses  full  of  antiquated 
prejudices."  He  desires  that  all  parents  learn  enough 
physiology  to  be  able  to  watch  over  the  health  of 
their  growing  children.  "It  is  time  that  the  benefits 
which  our  sheep  and  oxen  are  deriving  from  the 
investigations  of  the  laboratory  should  be  partici- 
pated in  by  our  children." 

As  Emerson,  the  American  whom  Mr.   Spencer 


70  HERBERT  SPENCER 

quotes,  has  said,  "The  first  requisite  for  success 
in  life  is  to  be  a  good  animal."  To  become  ,a  good 
animal,  you  must  accept  as  guide  and  counsellor 
Nature,  and  science,  its  interpreter.  "If  you  will 
let  Nature  follow  its  own  path,  merely  furnishing  it 
with  the  materials  needed  for  bodily  growth  as  well 
as  for  growth  of  the  mind,  it  will  know  how  to  in- 
sure harmonious  development  in  the  human  being 
unaided." 

To  Mr.  Spencer  the  question  of  nourishment  is 
of  most  importance.  He  returns  to  it  several  times, 
and  even  discusses  it  in  his  book  on  Principles  0} 
Morality.  In  his  wide  and  full  conception  of  human 
duties,  all  actions  which  affect  the  well-being  of  a  man, 
directly  or  indirectly,  spring  from  one  source,  moral- 
ity. It  is  wrong,  a  physical  sin,  to  eat  too  little,  to  in- 
flict privations  on  oneself,  to  prolong  labour  to  the 
point  of  exhaustion,  quite  as  much  as  to  be  idle  or  in- 
temperate. It  is  morally  virtuous  to  attend  to  clean- 
liness, the  care  of  one's  health,  to  an  alternation 
of  work  and  rest,  to  sleep  long  enough,  and  to  eat 
substantial  and  healthy  meals,  just  as  much  as  it  is 
to  practise  sincerity,  honesty,  generosity,  and  all  the 
duties  most  sanctioned  in  the  ancient  moral  code. 

In  food,  two  things  must  be  considered :  quantity 
and  quality.  In  regard  to  the  former,  human  beings 
in  reaction  against  one  kind  of  excess  pass,  according 


HERBERT  SPENCER  71 

to  the  law  of  opposites,  to  its  contrary;  from  des- 
potism to  license  and  anarchy,  from  extreme  piety 
to  scepticism.  A  corresponding  contrast  may  be 
noted  in  our  dining  customs.  Our  parents  ate  and 
drank  freely;  nowadays  it  is  temperance  that  is 
fashionable.  Formerly,  especially  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts, children  were  allowed  to  gorge  themselves; 
the  tendency  is  rather,  at  present,  to  give  them  too 
little  nourishment.  Now,  eating  too  much  or  too 
little  are  both  kinds  of  excess,  of  evil,  and  the  latter 
is  the  worse. 

Food  should  above  all  be  abundant.  Let  a  child" 
eat  until  he  is  satisfied.  Appetite  is  a  sure  guide  in 
the  case  of  babies,  and  also  in  the  case  of  adults 
who  lead  regular  lives;  sick  persons  and  even  ani- 
mals may  follow  it  without  injury.  How  can  par- 
ents who  know  nothing  whatever  about  the  laws  of 
nutrition  be  so  foolish  as  to  claim  to  decide  for  Nature 
and  to  make  arbitrary  rules  for  the  needs  of  their 
child's  stomach?  Just  as  in  the  state  there  are 
"too  many  laws,"  —  that  is  the  title  of  one  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  Political  Essays,  —  so  in  the  family  there 
are  too  many  restrictions  and  forbidden  things. 

But,  some  one  will  say,  there  is  proof  that  it  is  . 
dangerous  to  supply  all  the  demands  of  a  child's 
appetite,  for  children  indulge  in  such  gluttonous 
feasts  sometimes  that  they  make  themselves  ill. 


72  HERBERT  SPENCER 

In  the  first  place,  are  such  excesses  as  frequent  as 
people  are  apt  to  say?  The  child  does  not  gor- 
mandise by  nature;  the  habit  is  acquired.  Mr. 
Spencer  quotes  from  an  English  publication,  The 
Encyclopedia  of  Practical  Medicine,  a  statement 
which  might  have  been  written  by  Rousseau:  "To 
eat  too  much  is  a  vice  of  adults  rather  than  of  chil- 
dren :  the  latter  are  rarely  gluttonous  or  epicurean, 
and  they  become  so  only  by  the  fault  of  their  par- 
ents." Moreover,  as  Mr.  Spencer  ingeniously  ex- 
plains, the  feasting  of  a  child  indulging  to  repletion  in 
fruits  and  sweetmeats  is  merely  Nature's  way  of  taking 
a  sensual  revenge  against  a  regimen  that  is  too  ascetic. 
When  a  child  is  fed  too  sparingly,  and  fed  on  insipid 
food,  —  bread  and  milk,  butter  and  tea,  —  when  the 
things  he  likes  are  forbidden  him,  is  it  astonishing 
that,  having  been  denied  a  diet  which  supplies  agree- 
able sensations,  the  day  that  he  is  let  loose  in  a  con- 
fectioner's shop  he  is  tempted  beyond  measure,  and 
he  reacts  too  violently  against  the  privations  of  his 
long  Lent  by  breaking  out  into  an  impromptu  car- 
nival ? 

Mr.  Spencer  is  not  the  man  to  encourage  fasting 
and  abstinence.  He  believes  in  the  superiority  of 
men  and  races  who  are  well  nourished,  forgetting 
that  there  are  some  weaklings  who  have  also  made 
their  way  in  the  world.  Feuerbach  said,. "A  man 


HERBERT  SPENCER  73 

is  what  he  eats."  Mr.  Spencer  almost  repeats  this: 
"The  well-fed  races  have  been  the  energetic  and 
dominant  races."  He  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  English  sailors,  men  fed  on  meat,  are  stronger 
than  the  sailors  of  other  nations  who  are  fed  on  starch 
foods.  M.  Maurice  de  Fleury  likewise  asserts  that 
the  French  diet  makes  more  fat  than  muscle,  and 
hence  tends  to  form  a  race  of  office-holders!  .  .  . 
To  modify  every  day  the  menus  of  the  meals  served 
to  pupils  of  the  lycees,  increasing  considerably  the 
proportion  of  meat,  would  this  suffice  to  transform 
character  and  inspire  us  rapidly  with  a  taste  for 
adventure  and  for  bold  enterprises?  To  do  this 
would  certainly  be  easier  than  to  seek  laboriously  to 
reform  our  curricula  and  methods  of  teaching.  .  .  . 
•  Sound  and  sufficient  feeding  is  most  necessary  for 
the  child.  In  the  first  place,  the  child  by  constant 
movement  uses  up  its  vital  tissues,  and  expends  heat 
much  more  rapidly  than  the  adult.  Besides  this,  it 
is  developing  every  day;  bit  by  bit  it  is  building 
up  its  bodily  structure;  whereas  the  adult,  having 
reached  the  limit  of  his  growth,  has  only  to  preserve 
what  he  has  constructed.  The  child,  then,  mu^ 
by  excess  of  nutrition  make  up  for  a  greater  ex- 
penditure of  force,  and  also  supply  material  for 
growth. 
Mr.  Spencer  would  not  forbid  the  child  meat, 


74  HERBERT  SPENCER 

"the  food  which  is  the  best  restorer";  he  forbids 
meat  only  to  very  little  children,  those  without 
either  teeth  or  the  muscular  strength  necessary  for 
chewing.  After  three  years  of  age,  flesh  food  is 
good,  and  the  contrary  opinion  has  spread  amongst 
rich  people  as  a  fashion,  and  amongst  the  poor  from 
motives  of  economy.  For  the  rest  there  can  be  no 
absolute  rule  in  such  a  matter;  children  may  be- 
come very  strong  on  a  diet  that  is  almost  exclusively 
vegetable,  as  is  well  shown  by  our  little  French 
peasants.  Mr.  Spencer  himself  did  not  flourish  well 
the  six  months  during  which  he  turned  vegetarian. 
He  declares  that  at  the  end  of  this  experiment  he 
experienced  much  falling  off  in  physical  and  moral 
strength.  As  a  general  rule,  meat  is  to  be  preferred 
to  bread,  because  it  is  more  nourishing;  and,  for 
the  same  reason,  bread  is  to  be  preferred  to  potatoes. 
As  to  the  quantity  of  meat,  that  will  vary  according 
to  circumstances,  nutrition  being  modified  by  cli- 
mate, by  the  exercise  taken,  with  the  hygrometric 
state  of  the  air,  and  the  electricity  contained  in  the 
atmosphere.  "In  English  colleges,"  says  M.  de 
fteury,  "300  grams  of  roast  meat  are  allowed  to 
each  child  daily";  that  would  be  too  much  for 
French  children. 

Mr.  Spencer's  notion  that  the  taste  for  sweet- 
meats should  not  be  repressed  is  original.    Sugar, 


HERBERT  SPENCER  75 

a  great  heat  producer,  plays  an  important  part  in 
the  development  of  the  body ;  hence,  in  the  craving 
for  sugar  manifested  by  children,  we  must  recognize 
a  legitimate  call  of  nature  claiming  what  it  needs. 
Many  physicians  hold  the  contrary  opinion,  and  pro- 
scribe sweetmeats,  " which  spoil  the  teeth."  Mr. 
Spencer  is  also  in  contradiction  with  most  experts 
in  hygiene;  they  forbid  usually  all  unripe  things, 
whereas  he  recommends  that  we  humour  the  taste 
of  children  for  fruit,  even  for  half-ripe  fruit.  Green 
gooseberries,  the  sourest  apples,  and  all  acid  vege- 
tables are  excellent  tonics. 

Yet  another  problem  is  that  of  variety  of  nourish- 
ment. It  is  foolish  to  force  children  to  eat  always 
the  same  things,  like  English  soldiers  who  are  con- 
demned in  barracks  to  twenty  years  of  boiled  beef. 
It  is  forgotten  that  monotony  breeds  disgust,  and 
new  dishes,  on  the  contrary,  produce  an  agreeable 
sensation  which  arouses  an  appetite.  Moreover, 
there  is  no  single  food  which  contains  all  the  nu- 
tritive elements  necessary  for  health.  One  feels 
a  shadow  of  regret  that  Mr.  Spencer  did  not  under- 
stand that  the  same  is  true  of  mental  food,  and  that* 
neither  science  nor  literature  alone  can  furnish  all 
that  is  required  for  a  completely  perfect  intellectual 
education. 

Let  us  pass  to  another  subject,  —  clothing.    Mr. 


76  HERBERT  SPENCER 

Spencer  continues  to  attack  asceticism,  that  is  to 
say,  customs  which  are  too  austere,  which  are  not 
adjusted  to  the  nature  or  feelings  of  the  child. 
Feelings  of  warmth  and  cold  should  determine  the 
choice  of  its  costume.  A  kind  of  "physical  con- 
science" warns  us  of  the  danger  to  which  we  are 
exposed  by  injurious  sensations.  People  who  trans- 
gress its  laws  no  doubt  scar  its  edge,  but  in  childhood 
it  is  instinctive  and  infallible,  'and  it  demands 
warm  clothing  in  winter  and  cool  clothing  in  summer. 
It  is  folly  to  seek  to  harden  the  body  against  sensa- 
tions that  presage  a  freezing  temperature.  "Not 
a  few  children  are  hardened  out  of  the  world." 
Cold  arrests  the  growth  of  men  as  well  as  plant  growth. 
The  human  race  in  cold  climates  —  the  Esquimaux 
and  Laplanders  —  are  small  and  stunted,  like  the 
sheep  on  the  Scotch  mountains  and  the  ponies 
of  the  Shetland  Isles.  The  younger  the  child  the 
more  necessary  is  warmth.  We  imagined  that  we 
were  imitating  the  English  and  courting  their  ad- 
miration in  letting  infants  go  about  in  all  weathers 
with  bare  legs,  bare  arms,  and  necks.  Let  us  not 
deceive  ourselves;  Mr.  Spencer,  who  strongly  con- 
demns these  half-clothed  fashions,  tells  us  that  it  is 
the  French  who  are  the  guilty  people,  and  he  blames 
them  accordingly.  It  was  already  very  regret- 
table, he  says,  that  English  ladies  were  led  by  the 


HERBERT  SPENCER  77 

capricious  tastes  of  Parisians  and  were  weak  enough 
to  follow  in  their  dress  all  the  follies  of  fashions 
invented  on  the  Continent.  But  it  is  monstrous 
that  under  the  same  inspiration  they  now  dress 
their  little  ones  like  "  mountebanks/'  It  is  good  to 
be  set  right ;  we  must  no  longer  lay  the  responsibility 
for  this  folly  on  England,  and,  as  most  French  doc- 
tors disapprove  of  this  fashion  of  light  clothing,  I 
think  it  is  strongly  compromised :  "I  have  consulted 
a  great  number  of  hygienists,"  writes  M.  de  Fleury; 
" almost  all  are  opposed  to  the  custom  of  bare  legs: 
they  impute  to  it  colds  and  bronchitis,  and  they 
accuse  it  of  injuring  the  nutrition  of  the  body  by 
causing  excessive  activity."  Mr.  Spencer  is  not  the 
only  chilly  scientist  who  would  have  children  well 
covered  up.  A  certain  Dr.  Combe,1  whom  he  often 
quotes,  would  have  all  clothing  thick  enough  to 
protect  the  body  "  against  every  chance  sensation  of 
cold,  however  slight " ;  Mr.  Spencer  says,  more  wisely, 
"against  every  abiding  sensation."  He  finishes  by 
recommending  coarse  woollen  stuff,  cloth  strong 
enough  to  endure  wear  and  tear,  preferably  of  a 
dull  gray  colour,  such  as  will  not  suffer  from  use  and 
exposure  in  childish  sports. 
The  education  of  the  child  is  defective,  then,  in 

1  Dr.  Combe,  A  Treatise  of  the  Physiological  and  Moral  Manage- 
ment of  Infancy,  London,  1854. 


78  HERBERT  SPENCER 

the  matter  of  food  and  clothing;  it  is  at  present 
also  defective  in  physical  exercise,  at  any  rate  the 
education  of  girls.  Even  in  England,  it  would 
seem,  the  weaker  sex,  or,  as  Mr.  Spencer  expresses 
it,  "the  gentler  sex,"  are  forbidden  by  public  preju- 
dice the  practice  of  those  bodily  exercises  which 
this  sex,  nevertheless,  particularly  needs,  either  as 
remedy  for  natural  delicacy,  or  to  fit  them  to  bear 
the  burdens  of  maternity  without  inconvenience. 
"Within  view,"  Mr.  Spencer  says,  "we  have  an 
establishment  for  young  ladies.  .  .  .  During  five 
months  we  have  not  once  had  our  attention  drawn 
to  the  premises  by  a  shout  or  a  laugh.  Occasionally 
girls  may  be  observed  sauntering  along  the  paths 
with  their  lesson  books  in  their  hands  or  else  walking 
arm  in  arm.  Once,  indeed,  we  saw  one  chase  an- 
other round  the  garden;  but  with  this  exception, 
nothing  like  vigorous  exercise  has  been  visible.  .  .  . 
We  have  a  vague  suspicion  that  rude  health  and 
abundant  vigour  are  considered  somewhat  plebeian." 
Mr.  Spencer  made  further  inquiries  and  he  became 
convinced  that  noisy  play  is  discredited  in  institu- 
tions for  young  ladies,  whereas  it  is  wildly  indulged 
in  by  the  boys.  He  protests  vehemently  against 
these  contradictions.  If  active  sports  do  not  hinder 
a  boy  from  becoming  a  true  gentleman,  why  should 
similar  activity  prevent  a  young  girl  from  growing 


HERBERT  SPENCER  79 

into  an  accomplished  woman?  However  violent 
may  be  the  games  in  the  playground  or  playing  field, 
why  imagine  that  we  shall  ever  see  young  ladies, 
when  their  school  days  are  ended,  amusing  them- 
selves by  turning  somersaults  in  the  streets,  or  by 
playing  marbles  in  the  drawing-room?  A  woman, 
like  a  man,  should  be  strong  and  healthy;  she  should 
not  blush  at  a  good  appetite,  although  that  may 
be,  perhaps,  vulgar,  and  she  should  take  her  share 
in  physical  exercises;  then  we  should  see  no  more 
of  those  pale,  thin,  angular,  flat-chested  persons 
who,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  filled  the  drawing- 
rooms  of  London  forty  years  ago. 

For  the  rest,  what  should  these  exercises  consist 
of?  In  the  first  place,  of  free  games.  Gymnastics 
do  not  offer  the  same  advantages;  formal  move- 
ments exercise  certain  parts  of  the  body  only;  as 
regards  quantity  of  muscular  action  they  are  in- 
ferior to  games,  and  also  hi  regard  to  quality.  They 
resemble  scholastic  exercises  too  much;  and  in 
consequence  they  are  not  accompanied  by  that 
valuable  stimulant  "  happiness,  the  most  powerful 
of  all  tonics,  delight  in  the  activity  itself."  Gym- 
nastics, doubtless,  are  better  than  nothing,  but 
they  cannot  replace  free  activities.  Here,  again, 
Nature  is  our  master;  and,  as  usual,  Mr.  Spencer 
invokes  the  occult  power  which  rules  over  Nature 


80  HERBERT  SPENCER 

and  places  physical  activity  under  the  protection  of 
the  wisdom  attending  "  divine  ordinations." 

Physical  education  has  been  necessary  in  every 
age.  It  is  yet  more  important  to-day,  in  an  epoch 
when  the  conditions  of  life  rarely  grant  us  rest,  and 
in  a  society  condemned  to  intense,  and  often  exces- 
sive, brain  activity.  On  the  one  hand,  the  struggle 
for  existence  becomes  every  day  more  fierce  and 
feverish.  Formerly,  war  claimed  thousands  of  vic- 
tims in  a  few  hours;  to-day,  the  battles  of  indus- 
try, by  overstraining  human  activity,  prepare, 
more  slowly  but  as  surely,  hecatombs  of  weak  and 
exhausted  men.  Also,  whilst  the  strain  of  modern 
life  becomes  every  day  greater,  we  find  that  we  have 
less  strength  to  encounter  it.  In  a  race  that  is  ageing, 
resisting  power  grows  feeble.  We  are  less  healthy 
than  our  fathers ;  and  our  children,  unless  we  guard 
against  it,  will  be  still  weaker  than  we.  We  are  like 
bankers  who,  just  at  the  time  when  they  will  have 
to  make  the  heaviest  payments,  find  that  funds  are 
very  low  in  their  coffers.  Hence  physical  education 
appears  to  be  the  vital  question,  one  which  must 
be  solved  at  any  cost,  if  we  are  to  arrest  degeneracy 
in  the  race.  It  does  not  concern  ourselves  and  the 
present  time  only;  it  concerns  our  children  and  the 
future.  In  our  efforts  to  combat  the  evil  we  must 
not  busy  ourselves  only  with  strengthening  the 


HERBERT  SPENCER  81 

constitution  through  exercise  and  attention  to  hy- 
gienic laws.  We  must,  as  far  as  is  possible,  get 
rid  of  causes  which  tend  to  enfeeblement,  hi  one 
word,  of  overstrain,  —  overstrain  of  body  and  of 
mind  both. 

No  one  has  pointed  out  the  fatal  consequences  of 
this  twofold  overstrain  more  emphatically  than  Mr. 
Spencer.  During  his  visit  to  America,  in  1882, 
when  making  a  speech  at  a  banquet  in  New  York, 
he  found  the  best  means  of  thanking  the  Americans 
for  their  hospitality  was  to  warn  them,  with  coura- 
geous frankness,  of  defects  in  their  hustling  civili- 
zation and  exhausting  habits.  He  entreated  them 
to  neglect  for  a  while  the  " Gospel  of  Labour"  and 
cultivate  the  " Gospel  of  Repose."  He  said  to  them, 
"I  have  been  struck  during  my  visit  by  the  number 
of  tired  faces,  on  which  I  could  read,  inscribed  in 
deep  wrinkles,  traces  of  heavy  burdens  borne  for 
long.  .  .  .  The  hair  turns  white  in  your  country 
ten  years  before  it  does  in  ours."  An  evolutionist, 
one  who  has  accepted  the  doctrine  of  heredity  in 
place  of  that  of  original  sin,  is  naturally  more  alarmed 
and  dismayed  than  the  common  philosopher  can 
be  by  the  thought  of  the  future  which  the  strain 
of  modern  activity  is  preparing  for  humanity.  The 
first  duty  of  a  man  is  the  care  of  the  body,  this  not 
only  out  of  regard  for  his  own  well-being,  but  also 


82  HERBERT  SPENCER 

out  of  consideration  for  his  descendants.  The 
strength  of  our  constitution  is  a  possession  granted 
us  for  temporary  use  only,  which  we  should  seek 
to  transmit,  if  not  increased,  at  least  intact,  to  our 
children.  To  bequeath  to  them  millions  of  dollars 
in  return  for  ruined  health,  that  will  in  no  way 
balance  the  wrong  that  we  shall  have  done  them, 
if  we  bequeath  also  the  defects  and  weaknesses  of 
an  exhausted  body. 

In  his  attack  on  overstrain  Mr.  Spencer  has  spe- 
cially in  view  the  abuse  of  school  tasks.  He  urges 
that  school  life  should  not  begin  too  early,  on  the 
pretext  that,  since  rivalry  for  standing  room  in  the 
world  is  growing  keener,  we  must  enter  it  earlier. 
He  cites  with  approval  a  physiologist  friend  of  his  — 
a  disciple  of  Rousseau,  certainly  —  who  said  to  him, 
"My  son  shall  have  no  teaching  until  he  is  eight  years 
old.  .  .  ."  He  does  not  desire  erudition  and  scholar- 
ship, studies  that  can  be  stored  in  the  brain  like 
fat  in  a  swollen  body,  but  which  do  not  tend  towards 
mental  vigour.  He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say,  he, 
the  apostle  of  scientific  education,  that  success  hi 
life  depends  less  on  knowledge  than  on  energy  and 
strength  of  will;  and  that  in  any  case  we  should 
hold  of  most  importance  and  acquire  first  practical 
knowledge,  —  the  knowledge  which  forms,  as  it 
were,  " mental  muscle." 


HERBERT  SPENCER  83 

Mr.  Spencer  fears  the  consequences  of  overpress- 
ure (culture  forcee),  especially  for  women;  inten- 
sive study  carried  to  an  excess  may,  in  their  case, 
cause  irreparable  injury.  The  higher  instruction 
given  to  young  English  girls  in  certain  English 
institutions  —  he  mentions  Girton  and  Newham  Col- 
leges —  is  incompatible  with  good  health,  —  health 
that  expresses  itself  in  good  humour,  gayety,  and 
overflowing  life.  Mr.  Spencer  gives  us  to  understand 
by  suggestive  words  that  " conjugal  unhappiness" 
may  arise  from  this  early  overstrain.  For  the  sake 
of  her  own  happiness,  as  well  as  that  of  her  future 
home  and  family,  the  strength  of  a  young  girl  should 
be  guarded,  and  brain  fatigue,  leading  to  nerve 
exhaustion,  prohibited.  Here,  again,  Mr.  Spencer 
shows  himself  a  disciple  of  Rousseau;  he  is  inclined 
to  wish  that  women  would  be  satisfied  with  their 
natural  attractions.  Men,  he  says,  do  not  want 
erudition  in  women.  What  they  want  to  find  in  a 
life  companion  is  physical  beauty,  good  nature,  and 
sound  sense."  —  "What  man,"  he  says  at  another 
time,  "ever  fell  in  love  with  a  woman  because  she 
knew  Italian  or  German?  But  rosy  cheeks  and 
laughing  eyes  are  great  attractions." 

It  is  true  that  physical  overstrain  is  not  less 
harmful  than  intellectual  overstrain,  and  Mr.  Spen- 
cer is  no  fanatic  in  regard  to  athletic  games.  Can 


84  HERBERT  SPENCER 

one  credit  it?  He  condemns  "football."  Foot- 
ball has,  however,  survived  his  criticisms,  violent 
though  they  were,  since  he  attributed  to  it  a  "  brutal- 
izing influence. "  He  would  permit  only  those  games 
which  demand  a  moderate  amount  of  physical  exer- 
tion. Brutal  force  in  no  way  attracts  his  admiration ; 
it  is  well  known  that  he  was  a  passionate  opponent 
of  the  military  spirit  and  the  savage  practices  that 
it  sometimes  engenders.  He  speaks  hard  words 
against  Germany,  the  land  where  students  as  well 
as  officers  uphold  duelling,  and  "  where  all  the  males 
are  trained  to  be  soldiers."  He  reflects  upon  France 
unjustly  when  he  says  that  all  the  energy  of  the 
nation  is  concentrated  in  its  teeth  and  in  its  claws. 
Had  he  foreseen  in  1862  the  events  of  1900-1901,  he 
might  have  reserved  some  of  these  bitter  reproaches 
for  his  own  country.  .  .  .  But  I  am  at  fault;  he 
did  do  that.  He  did  not  forget  the  outrages  that 
followed  the  conquests  of  the  English  colonies; 
he  mentions,  for  instance,  amongst  others,  the  atroc- 
ities committed  in  India  on  the  day  when,  having 
shot  a  whole  band  of  Sepoys,  Englishmen  fired  into 
the  human  pile  in  order  to  make  a  sure  end  of  the 
unhappy  sufferers  who  were  still  breathing.  The 
present  war  could  supply  other  illustrations  for 
similar  criticisms.  .  .  . 
However  intent,  then,  Mr.  Spencer  may  be  on 


HERBERT  SPENCER  85 

the  acquisition  of  physical  virtues,  strength  of 
body  and  courage,  he  does  not  exalt  them  above 
measure.  He  thinks  with  reason  that  they  will 
always  be  necessary,  and  especially  necessary  so 
long  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  national  life  is  mili- 
tarism. But  he  puts  them  in  their  proper  place 
as  inferior  qualities,  which  should  be  subservient 
and  subordinate  to  moral  virtues  and  to  the  more 
elevated  human  attributes.  It  is  not  a  consequence 
of  Mr.  Spencer's  teaching  that  Lord  Rosebery,  in 
a  recent  discourse,  charged  English  education  with 
sacrificing  the  development  of  the  mind  to  physical 
exercises.  A  too  ardent  pursuit  of  muscular  force 
may  disturb  the  right  balance  of  the  faculties.  Just 
as  the  abuse  of  brain  work  exhausts  the  physical 
constitution  generally,  so  excessive  bodily  toil 
weakens  mental  power.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
mental  inertia  follows  on  too  great  physical  exer- 
tion, and  that  a  too  rapid  growth  on  the  part  of  a 
child  is  accompanied  by  a  kind  of  physical  prostra- 
tion. The  ideal  is  to  maintain  a  wise  equilibrium 
between  two  opposing  activities.  Let  us  remember 
that  " Nature  is  a  strict  accountant;  and  if  you 
demand  of  her  in  one  direction  more  than  she  is 
prepared  to  lay  out,  she  balances  the  account  by 
making  a  deduction  elsewhere." 


IF,  for  the  reasons  mentioned,  physical  education 
becomes  more  than  ever  an  absolute  necessity  when 
a  race  is  old  and  enfeebled,  for  reasons  of  a  different 
kind  moral  education  is  still  yet  more  imperative; 
and  at  first  Mr.  Spencer  appears  to  be  fully  aware  of 
this.  Disturbed  by  the  decline  of  religious  belief, 
anxious  about  the  enfeeblement  of  the  human  con- 
science resulting  from  the  diminution  of  faith  in  the 
supernatural,  —  and  we  cannot  certainly  depend  on 
Mr.  Spencer's  writings  to  check  this  movement, — he 
affirms  the  need  of  letting  the  sciences  now  develop- 
ing take  the  place  of  the  faith  which  is  diminishing. 
Morality  in  its  turn  should  become  a  science.  For 
the  supernatural  moral  code,  the  authority  of  which 
is  disappearing,  dead,  or  at  least  much  weakened,  we 
should  make  haste  to  substitute  a  natural  moral  code, 
which  should  borrow  its  strength  and  authority  only 
from  evidence  supplied  by  its  own  demonstrations; 
only  this  alone  is  able  to  take  the  place  of  dogmas 
of  sacred  origin,  the  laws  of  which  have  governed 
believers  for  centuries.  It  would  cause  moral  dis- 
aster, if  science,  having  become  master,  did  not  suc- 

86 


HERBERT  SPENCER  87 

ceed  in  gaining  the  command  over  the  souls  which 
are  partly  shaking  off  the  bonds  of  a  decaying 
religion. 

Yet,  by  a  contradiction  astonishing  in  a  mind  so 
systematic  as  Mr.  Spencer's,  the  same  philosopher, 
who  swears  by  science  alone,  gives  a  striking  proof 
of  his  own  fallacy  and  overthrows  the  hopes  with 
which  he  had  inspired  us,  for  he  puts  aside  his  con- 
fidence in  science  when  it  asserts  a  claim  to  moralize 
mankind,  and  will  not  admit  its  qualifications.  He  j 
does  not  admit  that  knowledge  can  have  a  benefi- 
cial effect  on  the  conduct  and  habits  of  men.  He 
scoffs  pitilessly  at  what  he  calls  modern  fanaticism, 
the  "  fanaticism  of  instruction."  He  is  amused  by 
the  moralists  who  appeal  to  the  statistics  of  crime 
to  show  that  ignorance  and  crime  are  correlative, 
are  connected  the  one  with  the  other  in  a  cause  and 
effect  relationship.  One  might  as  well  try  to  main- 
tain (he  says)  that  crime  is  caused  by  the  neglect 
of  frequent  washing  and  dirty  clothing,  and  that 
criminality  is  habitually  accompanied  by  a  dirty 
skin.  What  relation  can  there  be  between  the  art 
of  naming  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  or  of  tracing 
black  signs  on  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  and  the  power 
of  acting  rightly  in  life?  Pure  knowledge  has  no 
influence  on  the  will.  In  a  word,  Mr.  Spencer  puts 
no  faith  in  the  curative  and  moralizing  power  of 


88  HERBERT  SPENCER 

science.  He  predicts  that  events  will  more  and 
more  prove  vain  the  hopes  which  present-day 
enthusiasm  places  in  the  diffusion  of  intellectual 
light.  It  is  true  that  he  does  not  go  so  far  as  some 
friends  of  ignorance,  and  assert  that  instruction  is 
injurious  and  corrupting;  but  he  believes  it  to  be 
powerless  and  sterile  as  a  moral  instrument.  Faith 
in  reading  and  class  books  is  an  idol  of  the  period. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  the  English  positivist  towards 
the  end  of  his  life  reached,  like  Auguste  Comte,  the 
point  of  proclaiming  the  sovereignty  of  feeling  and 
the  powerlessness  of  reason,  saying,  in  fitting  terms, 
"It  is  not  ideas  which  overturn  the  world  and  rule 
it,  it  is  feeling." 

Mr.  Spencer  affirms  the  practical  inefficacy,  not 
only  of  science  generally,  but  also  of  direct  moral 
instruction;  this  he  considers  fruitless.  We  think 
we  can  teach  virtue  by  lessons !  That  is  a  de- 
lusion. The  will  does  not  obey  a  precept  solely 
because  the  intelligence  understands  and  believes 
it  true.  How  many  men  are  well  instructed  about 
duty,  yet  do  not  practise  it?  How  many,  even 
amongst  the  professors  of  ethics,  do  not  in  their  lives 
conform  to  the  excellent  words  that  pass  out  of 
their  lips?  Mr.  Spencer  notes  amongst  his  neigh- 
bours —  and  this  would  be  an  easy  matter  in  any 
country  —  sad  instances  of  intolerance  and  of  deep 


HERBERT  SPENCER  89 

wrongs  on  the  part  of  Christian  writers  who  spend 
their  lives  in  preaching  charity.  Let  us,  then,  aban- 
don the  hope  of  giving  moral  education  through  the 
medium  of  instruction.  Even  ministers  of  religion 
do  not  flatter  themselves  that  they  succeed  in  this 
by  religious  preaching,  conducted  hi  churches  and 
chapels  where  an  impressive  architecture,  stained 
glass  windows,  pictures,  and  artistic  decoration, 
hymns  and  music,  with  mysterious  half  lights,  call 
the  soul  to  meditation  and  retirement.  How,  then, 
can  a  lay  institution  expect  to  realize  it  by  preaching 
morality  in  their  bare  and  cold  class  rooms,  where 
the  children's  eyes  rest  on  geographical  maps  and 
lesson  pictures  of  animals  and  of  objects? 

If  Mr.  Spencer  had  restricted  himself  to  pointing 
out  insufficiency  in  the  effect  of  moral  instruction,  we 
should  have  agreed  with  him  gladly.  A  simple 
notion  formed  hi  the  mind  is  one  thing,  the  will  to 
act  another.  In  order  to  form  a  moral  sense,  we 
must  appeal  to  other  forces  besides  the  intellect, 
even  when  this  is  most  highly  stored  with  knowledge 
and  most  fully  enlightened  by  science.  But  if  in- 
struction cannot  do  everything,  it  can  do  something. 
If  it  is  not  the  sole  inspirer  of  virtue,  and  certain 
of  being  obeyed,  it  is  at  least  a  counsellor,  who  at 
times  makes  itself  heard.  Instruction  does  not 
suffice  to  arouse  the  will  into  action,  yet  by  enlighten- 


90  HERBERT  SPENCER 

ing  the  mind  it  prepares  it  for  action.  Has  nothing 
been  done  in  aid  of  morality  when  prejudices,  super- 
stition, and  error  have  been  uprooted?  Has  no 
guarantee  against  vice  been  given  when  its  harmful 
effects  have  been  explained?  We  are,  above  all, 
surprised  that  a  utilitarian  moralist,  one  who  esti- 
mates the  value  of  human  actions  by  their  results, 
according  to  their  effect  upon  individual  and  social 
happiness,  refuses  to  recognize  the  value,  for  in- 
stance, of  pointing  out  the  disastrous  physical  con- 
sequences which  follow  immoral  acts  ?  That  feeling 
prompts  men  to  act,  we  admit;  but  an  enlightened 
intelligence  acts,  we  maintain,  upon  feeling.  Is  it 
not  good  for  warmth  of  heart  that  the  brain  be  first 
illuminated?  A  good  moral  habit  is  acquired  only 
by  a  frequent  repetition  of  the  same  action.  That 
also  we  admit;  but  to  induce  a  child  to  repeat  an 
action,  it  is  not  a  waste  of  time  to  point  out  its 
utility  and  beauty.  You  desire  that  a  young  man 
should  be  temperate.  Surely  it  will  be  of  service 
to  give  him  an  insight  into  the  dreadful  ravages 
produced  by  the  plague  of  alcoholism.  You  desire 
that  he  should  be  generous,  kindly,  and  patriotic. 
Have  men,  then,  in  all  ages  erred  who,  desiring  to 
preach  virtue,  have  appealed  to  great  examples, 
to  heroes  and  sages  in  order  to  arouse  emulation? 
The  opposition  that  Mr.  Spencer  has  felt  obliged 


HERBERT  SPENCER  91 

to  express  against  science  as  one  of  the  means  of 
moral  progress  is,  then,  as  unfair  as  it  is  unexpected ; 
and  he  might  be  asked  why,  if  he  were  right,  should 
he  himself  exert  such  great  efforts  for  the  purpose 
of  organizing  scientific  moral  laws  into  a  system? 
If  a  knowledge  of  rational  theory  is  of  no  assistance 
in  modifying  and  ameliorating  practice,  why  form 
the  theory? 

But  to  explain  Mr.  Spencer's  attitude  on  the 
question  of  teaching  ethics,  it  may  be  necessary  to 
be  acquainted  with  his  view  of  moral  habits  in  gen- 
eral. The  ethics  of  the  evolutionist  resemble  so 
little  the  ideas  ordinarily  held,  that  one  could  well 
believe  it  useless  to  include  the  subject  as  a  part 
of  school  instruction;  and  hence  the  contradiction, 
the  appearance  of  which  has  astonished  us,  may 
not,  in  fact,  exist,  being  only  a  consequence  of  the 
author's  system. 

Mr.  Spencer's  ethics  are  " hedonistic,"  a  morality 
based  on  " pleasure,"  or  rather  on  " utility";  it  is 
a  morality  governed  by  interest,  but  interest  under- 
stood in  its  highest  sense.  It  is  a  morality  the  end 
of  which  is  not  a  blind,  impulsive  pursuit  of  pleasure, 
but  an  intelligent  planning  for  happiness,  the  happi- 
ness of  others  as  well  as  our  own.  Happiness  is 
the  final  end  of  life.  We  must  dismiss  the  cruel 
moralists  who  deny  us  all  pleasures.  We  must 


92  HERBERT  SPENCER 

get  rid  of  the  idea  of  a  diabolic  Deity,  whom  ascetic 
men  in  former  times  thought  to  please  when  they 
lashed  themselves  and  inflicted  on  themselves  all 
sorts  of  privations  and  sacrifices.  A  desire  for 
pleasure  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  human  efforts,  even 
of  those  which  issue  in  suffering  voluntarily  accepted. 
The  new  ideal  should  be  happiness,  the  happiness 
of  the  world;  and  the  evolution  of  all  living  things 
is  moving  insensibly  towards  this  ideal. 

Full  and  complete  "individuation"  is  the  final 
end  of  evolution,  yet  it  would  appear  as  if  Mr. 
Spencer's  moral  problem  is  less  that  of  the  individual, 
and  of  persons  as  such,  than  of  the  race.  Humanity 
is  enmeshed  in  the  system  of  the  universe.  Morality 
is  a  "cosmic  problem."  The  moral  law  is  an  off- 
shoot of  the  law  of  evolution  which  governs  every- 
thing. A  continual  selection  is  lifting  beings  from 
a  nebulous  uniformity  and  confused  starting-points 
up  towards  an  individualism,  varied  and  harmonious. 
Just  as  out  of  a  primitive  nebulous  condition  have 
arisen  innumerable  distinct  stars,  so  from  a  disor- 
dered mass  of  savage  tribes  have  emerged  the  indi- 
viduals that  compose  civilized  societies.  If  "indi- 
viduation"  is  at  its  lowest  point  in  the  inorganic 
world,  it  is  at  its  highest  amongst  men.  And  this 
"  individuation "  is  nothing  else  than  the  power  to 
maintain  existence,  and  at  the  same  time  to  widen 


HERBERT  SPENCER  93 

it  and  render  it  more  complete.  Complete,  perfect, 
good,  moral,  —  these  are  synonymous  words.  A  day 
will  arrive  when  the  altruistic  tendencies  will  be  as 
strong  in  the  human  heart  as  now  are  the  egoistic. 
Human  morality  grows  gradually.  For  each  in- 
dividual it  is  less  the  result  of  personal  will  than 
the  inherited  result  of  the  actions  of  one's  ancestors. 
Progress  is  a  necessity.  When  progress  shall  have 
reached  its  last  stage,  and,  in  consequence,  the  in- 
dividual be  completely  adapted  both  to  Nature 
and  society,  then  "right  conduct"  will  be  the  natu- 
ral conduct.  Actions  executed  by  men  now  with 
repugnance,  and  only  because  they  seem  obligatory, 
will  be  accomplished  pleasantly  and  without  effort ; 
and  in  the  same  way  those  that  a  man  avoids  at 
whatever  cost  from  a  feeling  of  duty,  —  from  these 
he  will  refrain  without  any  merit  to  himself,  because 
they  will  be  disagreeable  to  him.  In  the  golden 
age  at  the  end  of  the  centuries  man  will  become 
very  much  what  animals  now  are,  having  fixed 
instincts;  and  he  will  accomplish  mechanically 
what  we  call  "the  good."  Thus  Mr.  Spencer  leads 
humanity  towards  a  sort  of  moral  automatism,  and 
there  leaves  it.  It  is  a  strange  ideal,  which,  for  the 
rest,  need  not  disturb  us  much,  for  it  is  very  far  in 
the  distance ;  on  certain  sides  it  resembles,  however 
peculiar  that  may  be,  the  eternal  blessedness  prom- 


94  HERBERT  SPENCER 

ised  by  the  Church  to  those  who  have  merited  elec- 
tion by  the  Godhead. 

But  while  awaiting  the  coming  of  this  terrestrial 
paradise,  prepared  for  the  children  of  evolution,  what 
is  the  moral  position  of  the  men  who  live  during 
the  provisory  stages  which  must  be  crossed  by 
humanity?  It  is  quite  evident  that  the  old  moral 
notions  have  either  disappeared  or  entirely  changed 
their  meaning.  The  word  "duty"  is  nothing  more 
than  a  word.  It  has  no  longer  any  moral  sanction. 
The  categorical  imperative  of  Kant  is  a  mere  fiction. 

In  its  place  the  new  philosophy  proposes  a  kind 
of  natural  and  subjective  necessity,  arising  out  of 
our  nature.  Our  moral  sense  is  the  product  of  the 
experiences  of  utility,  which  the  race  has  organized 
and  consolidated  through  successive  generations. 
An  authority  superior  to  our  own  will,  imposing  laws, 
commands,  prohibitions,  disappears;  there  is  only 
a  natural  constraining  force,  springing  from  heredi- 
tary habits,  revealing  itself  in  what  Mr.  Spencer 
calls  " moral  intuitions,"  a  kind  of  moral  sense. 
Man  ascends  little  by  little  from  egoism  to  altruism. 
Generous  feelings  become  part  of  his  physical  or- 
ganism. For  the  rest,  they  are  only  —  as  Rousseau 
suggested  —  personal  sentiments  aroused  and  trans- 
formed by  sympathy.  Thus  the  feeling  of  justice  is 
merely  a  love  of  personal  liberty,  somehow  widened 


HERBERT  SPENCER  95 

and  generalized  by  a  sympathetic  reflection  on 
attacks  made  against  the  liberty  of  other  people. 

Briefly  stated,  to  live  morally  is,  according  to  the 
ancient  doctrine  of  the  Stoics  and  Epicureans,  "to 
live  in  harmony  with  Nature."  If  this  is  so,  we  can 
understand  that  Mr.  Spencer  need  not  concern 
himself  about  instruction  in  morality,  since,  on  the 
one  hand,  it  is  not  necessary  to  do  so,  and,  on  the 
other,  Nature  is  becoming  ever  more  and  more  per- 
fect, is  sufficient  in  itself. 

Nevertheless,  for  it  to  be  entirely  sufficient  in  itself, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  proclaim,  as  Rousseau  did 
proclaim,  that  all  a  child's  instincts  are  good  and 
innocent;  and  this  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  do.  The 
doctrine  of  absolute  optimism,  called  in  England 
"Lord  Palmerston's  dogma,"  professed  also  by  the 
poet  Shelley,  who  said,  "Man  is  good,  society  bad, 
and  would  mankind  give  up  their  old  institutions 
and  prejudices,  all  the  evils  of  the  world  would  at 
once  disappear," — this  dogma  our  philosopher  hi 
no  way  accepts,  nor  could  he  accept  it  without 
denying  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  of  a  progres- 
sive perfection  of  humanity.  Sometimes  he  ap- 
pears entirely  of  the  opposite  opinion,  and  ready 
to  subscribe  to  the  doctrine  of  natural  perversity. 
The  picture  he  draws  of  a  child's  character  is  not 
at  all  flattering;  it  reminds  us  of  the  wretched  list 


96  HERBERT  SPENCER 

of  sins  ascribed  to  children  by  Bruyere :  "  As  a  child's 
features  resemble  for  a  time  those  of  the  savage,  so, 
too,  do  his  instincts ;  hence  the  tendencies  to  cruelty, 
to  thieving,  and  lying  so  general  amongst  children.77 
In  this  picture,  limned  in  black,  Mr.  Spencer  excludes 
even  the  delight  and  charm  that  lie  in  the  rosy,  smil- 
ing countenance  of  a  tiny  baby.  He  sees  in  it  only 
a  repulsive,  ill-formed  creature,  the  face  of  which  re- 
calls in  every  feature  that  of  primitive  man :  a  flat 
nose,  forward  opening  nostrils,  large  lips,  etc.  In 
morals  the  child  is  just  as  imperfect.  "  He  is  a  prey 
to  bad  impulses.  The  barbaric  race  from  which 
he  is  descended  relives  in  him."  What  an  admis- 
sion for  an  evolutionist,  since,  instead  of  the  progress 
he  had  proclaimed,  and  which  time  ought  already 
to  have  established,  he  finds  in  the  children  of  to- 
day a  survival  of  the  savagery  of  the  first  ages ! 
From  this  affirmation  of  the  sad  effects  of  heredity 
should  we  not  be  more  convinced  than  ever  of  the 
necessity  of  education  and,  in  particular,  of  moral 
education  ? 

It  is  true  that  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  hold  to  his 
first  judgment  on  the  nature  of  children,  which  was 
entirely  condemnatory.  His  final  conclusion  is 
that  their  feelings  are  neither  entirely  good  nor 
entirely  bad.  Estimating  both  the  for  and  against, 
he  practically  says,  "I  have  not  a  good  enough 


HERBERT  SPENCER  97 

opinion  of  Nature  to  think  it  capable  of  going  straight 
without  watching,  nor  one  bad  enough  to  say  with 
the  pessimists  that  the  heart  of  man  is  deceitful 
above  all  things  and  desperately  wicked."  But 
this  conclusion,  however  softened,  still  leaves  in 
some  degree  the  contradiction  which  we  have  noted. 
For  if  any  human  tendencies  are  bad  and  depraved, 
must  we  not  use  some  kind  of  instruction  with  a 
view  of  forming  feelings  and  a  will  which  will  oppose 
and  correct  these  perverse  instincts  ?  If,  perchance, 
science  proves  powerless  to  accomplish  this  task, 
what  is  there  left  but  to  appeal  anew  to  religious 
instruction  ? 

But,  admitting  what  is  not  the  fact,  that  instruc- 
tion can  do  nothing  to  develop  moral  strength,  how 
can  we  forget  that  education  comprises  other  things 
than  arousing  ideas  and  feelings  which  will  incline 
us  to  do  what  is  right ;  that  it  ought  to  decide  exactly 
the  deeds  which  are  hi  harmony  with  morality,  hi 
whatever  way  defined?  Moral  teaching  gives  un- 
deniable proof  of  its  value  at  this  juncture.  And 
we  may  add  that  it  is  specially  the  duty  of  utili- 
tarians, those  who  weaken  or  suppress  the  old  ideas 
of  duty  and  obligation,  and  have  need  of  a  moral 
code  in  a  different  way  from  the  old  school,  to  ex- 
plain how  we  shall  distinguish  what  is  useful  from 
what  is  not  useful,  good  from  evil,  as  they  under- 


98  HERBERT  SPENCER 

stand  it.  In  fact,  in  traditional  morality  it  was 
possible  to  maintain  that  reflection  and  reason  were 
almost  useless.  Then  a  law,  sovereign  and  indis- 
putable, distinguishing  good  from  evil  in  themselves, 
addressed  its  commands  to  docile  consciences.  An 
absolute  duty  was  imposed,  and  there  remained 
only  to  obey,  without  discussion.  How  much 
more  necessary  is  the  aid  of  science  in  a  moral- 
ity based  on  interest!  How  much  confusion 
may  arise  between  vague  and  definite  interests; 
what  a  delicate  matter  to  discern  one's  duty,  when 
the  said  duty  consists  in  finding  out  the  actions 
which  are  in  harmony  with  utility !  It  is  only  from 
an  exact  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life  and  social 
conditions  that  we  can  deduce  the  modes  of  conduct 
which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  tend  to  promote  in- 
dividual and  social  happiness.  As  J.  S.  Mill  forcibly 
said,  "The  salvation  of  utilitarianism  will  be 
education."  It  is,  in  fact,  education  which  alone 
can  prevent  a  race  governed  "by  interest  from 
going  to  wreck  and  ruin  through  selfishness  and 
immorality. 

But  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
conscious  of  the  very  great  difficulties  involved  in 
utilitarian  morality.  Moral  education,  as  presented 
by  him,  is  a  brief  topic ;  it  is  included  almost  in  one 
chapter,  that  on  discipline.  Moreover,  discipline 


HERBERT  SPENCER  99 

is  of  one  kind  only,  —  repressive,  —  a  discipline  of 
punishments. 

Here,  again,  Nature  and  utility  are  the  guides  of 
the  author  of  Education.  His  system  of  discipline,  — 
the  discipline  of  natural  reactions,  —  what  might  be 
called  a  discipline  of  consequences  or  of  effects,  con- 
sists, in  fact,  in  putting  a  child  face  to  face  with  Na- 
ture, and  letting  it  find  its  punishment  in  a  diminution 
of  its  comfort.  In  reality,  it  is  Rousseau 's  theory 
amplified,  systematized,  and  extended  to  cover  the 
whole  of  life.  A  child  falls ;  the  pain  caused  by  the 
fall  warns  him  to  be  careful  in  his  movements.  If 
he  should  burn  his  hand  in  the  flame  of  a  candle,  or 
on  the  hot  bar  of  a  grate,  he  will  have  learnt  to  beware 
of  fire.  It  is  this  natural  relationship,  one  which 
unites  certain  consequences  with  every  action,  that 
we  must  use  to  direct  the  conduct  of  a  child.  It  is 
easy  to  discover  defects  and  fallacies  in  a  discipline 
of  this  nature. 

,  A  little  girl,  one  of  the  " tiresome  little  creatures" 
who  puts  the  house  in  disorder,  who  dreams  and 
loiters,  is  not  ready  at  the  appointed  time  to  go  for 
a  walk.  To  punish  her,  we  say  that  she  is  to  lose  her 
walk;  Mr.  Spencer  asserts  that  the  next  time  she 
will  be  ready  at  the  right  hour.  Is  he  quite  sure  of 
this?  In  this  somewhat  imaginary  world  of  docile 
and  pliant  children  pictured  by  his  optimism,  the 


100  HERBERT  SPENCER 

erring  child  yields  to  the  first  summons  of  Nature ; 
merely  the  idea  of  the  privation  that  will  be  inflicted 
on  him,  and  of  which  he  has  had  only  one  experience, 
makes  him  reform.  We  are  afraid  that  in  the  real 
world  there  are  stubborn  and  indocile  characters 
whom  it  will  not  prove  as  easy  to  convert  and 
restore  to  order.  Another  illustration:  a  boy 
refuses  to  put  his  playthings  back  in  their  places. 
To  correct  him,  the  only  thing  to  be  done  is  to  take 
away  his  box  of  playthings.  First,  notice  that  here, 
as  before,  it  is  not  Nature  which  is  the  reagent,  it  is 
the  parents  who  intervene  either  to  oblige  the  child 
to  stay  at  home,  or  to  deprive  him  of  his  playthings. 
But,  more  than  that,  who  guarantees  that  the  dis- 
orderly boy  will  so  quickly  repent?  May  we  not 
suppose  that  sometimes  he  will  persist  in  his  dis- 
orderly habits,  if  we  do  not  employ  other  means  to 
correct  them?  It  is  much  to  be  feared  that  this 
discipline  of  results  would  not  give  what  is  awaited 
from  it;  and  we  may  conclude  already  that  its 
efficacy  would  be  very  far  from  certain. 

But  yet  another  difficulty :  whatever  Mr.  Spencer 
says  about  its  strict  justice,  this  natural  form  of 
discipline  is  not  proportionate  in  the  punishments 
that  it  inflicts,  either  to  the  physical  strength  of 
the  wrong-doer,  or  to  the  character  and  gravity 
of  the  transgression.  Emile  has  broken  the  panes 


HERBERT  SPENCER  101 

of  a  window,  and  a  serious  cold  teaches  him  not  to 
do  this  again.  Good!  But  this  cold  may  turn 
to  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  if  the  child  is  delicate, 
and  the  punishment  becomes  so  heavy  that  it  kills 
the  child.  Would  you  expose  to  the  strokes  of 
blind  Nature  —  for,  whatever  Mr.  Spencer  may  say 
about  the  matter,  Nature  is  often  blind  to  decrees 
unchangeable  and  inexorable  —  creatures  without 
distinction,  whose  power  of  resistance  is  so  variable  ? 
A  strong  child  can  bear  without  injury  chills  which 
would  benumb  a  child  with  delicate  lungs  to  the 
verge  of  death,  just  as  shrubs  resist  frosty  days 
which  cause  fragile  plants  to  wither  and  die. 
Nature,  less  intelligent  and  kindly  than  Mr.  Spencer 
would  believe,  does  not,  in  its  pitiless  reactions,  take 
into  account  at  all  the  infinite  diversities  and  va- 
riations of  temperament  in  mankind.  It  does  not 
weigh  in  its  balance  the  age  and  the  physical  strength 
or  weakness  of  its  dependents.  Therefore,  we  may 
again  conclude  that  the  discipline  of  natural  reactions 
is  bad  —  bad  because  hard,  unjust,  and  cruel  to 
the  weak. 

Yet  again,  from  another  point  of  view,  it  is  unjust ; 
it  does  not  attend  to  the  moral  quality  of  actions. 
Whether  a  fault  has  been  committed  by  imprudence, 
by  stupidity,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  with  bad  in- 
tention, in  all  these  cases  the  same  sentence  may 


102  HERBERT  SPENCER 

be  awarded.  In  its  unconscious  and  fatal  repression, 
Nature  chastises  alike  the  innocent  breaking  of  its 
laws  and  voluntary  disobedience.  It  ignores  the 
motives  of  the  actions  which  it  represses.  A  poor 
child  who,  by  carelessness  or  even  by  excessive  zeal, 
sets  fire  to  its  bed  while  working  at  night,  will  be 
burnt  alive  just  as  much  as  the  wretch  who  sets 
fire  to  his  house  criminally.  A  child  running,  who, 
through  imprudence,  slips  on  a  stone,  may  break 
his  leg  just  as  much  as  the  little  glutton  who  falls 
from  the  top  of  a  ladder  up  which  he  has  climbed 
to  reach  some  forbidden  dainties.  Nature  is  not 
always  the  good  and  kindly  power  dreamt  of  by 
evolutionists.  Man,  and  still  more  the  child,  must 
be  protected  against  its  severities.  It  is  a  question 
whether  humanity  would  succeed  in  maintaining  life 
under  a  rule  of  natural  reactions.  As  J.  S.  Mill  has 
said,  "The  law  of  gravitation,  to  mention  no  other, 
is  the  cruellest  of  all  laws ;  it  breaks  the  neck  of  the 
best  and  most  amiable  man  mercilessly!" 

When  the  conditions  of  a  reaction  chance  to  make 
its  justice  exactly  balance  the  deed,  the  punish- 
ment often  falls  too  slowly  to  benefit  the  culprit. 
Frequently  it  is  nothing  more  than  an  act  of  revenge, 
or  of  platonic  vengeance,  so  to  speak,  on  the  part 
of  Nature,  which  reacts  too  late,  after  the  bad  habit 
has  taken  root  and  the  evil  become  irreparable. 


HERBERT  SPENCER  103 

A  scholar  is  idle;  a  time  will  certainly  come  in  his 
life  when  he  will  suffer  from  this  sin  of  his  youth; 
he  is  preparing  himself  to  fail  in  his  future  career; 
but  when  will  he  reckon  up  the  mischievous  conse- 
quences of  his  negligence?  Only  when  the  time 
for  remedying  them  has  passed.  Nature  has  no 
immediate  reactions  for  faults  of  this  kind.  At 
present,  idleness  gives  to  the  truant  only  the  sweets 
of  revery.  The  loss  of  a  lesson  puts  him  into  a  good 
temper.  Moreover,  this  slow-footed  justice  is  not 
infallible;  Nature,  too,  makes  errors  of  judgment. 
A  scholar  who  is  idle  and  intelligent  may  never  feel 
any  ill  effects  from  his  indolence  at  school,  while 
another,  less  well  endowed,  may  find  that  it  has 
paralyzed  his  springs  of  activity  forever. 

But  what,  above  everything  else,  discredits  in  our 
eyes  the  discipline  of  natural  reaction  when  it  is 
elevated  into  an  exclusive  system,  is  that  it  makes 
no  appeal  to  a  moral  sense.  As  M.  Gerard,  who  has 
treated  this  subject  in  a  masterly  way,  has  pointed 
out:  " Supposing  that  a  child  has  a  hand  nimble 
enough  to  escape  the  reactive  effect  of  an  imprudent 
action,  a  mind  sufficiently  quick  to  evade  the  con- 
sequences of  a  mistake,  he  escapes.  .  .  .  The  ques- 
tion in  that  case  is  not  that  of  acting  rightly,  but 
of  being  clever  and  successful."  In  a  mode  of  dis- 
cipline, therefore,  under  which  the  child  need  only 


104  HERBERT  SPENCER 

to  consider  the  material  consequences  of  his  actions, 
his  sole  aim  may  be  to  secure  himself  from  these,  a 
course  which,  with  a  little  contrivance,  need  not  be 
impossible.  It  will  appear  lawful  to  him  to  lie  if 
he  can  dissimulate  his  untruth;  to  thieve,  if  his 
larceny  will  remain  undiscovered.  The  net  of 
natural  justice  is  not  woven  so  close  that  a  clever 
wrong-doer  cannot  hope  to  escape  through  its  meshes 
without  loss,  and  unpunished.  If,  then,  the  dis- 
cipline of  natural  reactions  had  all  the  virtues  attrib- 
uted to  it  by  its  inventor,  there  would  yet  remain 
this  irremediable  defect  that  even  if  it  punishes  the 
fault,  it  does  not  moralize  the  offender.  It  is  empty 
of  a  moral  concept.  It  places  the  child  in  the  pres- 
ence of  physical  wrong  only.  It  reminds  one  of 
those  penitentiary  systems  which  chastise  the  crime, 
but  do  not  amend  the  criminal.  How  can  one  hope 
that  the  sole  memory  of  the  pain  inflicted  by  Nature 
will  have  the  power  to  hinder  the  man  or  child  from 
falling  back  into  his  error?  Does  the  tipsy  man 
remember  his  headache  the  day  after  a  drunken 
bout;  is  that  a  big  enough  counterweight  to  the 
attractions  and  pleasure  held  out  to  him  by  a  new 
visit  to  the  public-house  ? 

To  sum  up,  the  discipline  of  natural  reactions  is, 
in  many  ways,  insufficient  and  hazardous ;  at  times 
it  is  unjust  and  brutal.  Does  that  signify  that  it 


HERBERT  SPENCER  105 

has  no  advantages,  and  that  we  must  put  it  abso- 
lutely on  one  side  ?  No ;  it  may  be  a  useful  element 
in  discipline,  but  on  condition  that  it  is  made  com- 
plete :  in  the  first  place,  by  means  of  rewards,  —  of 
these  Mr.  Spencer  says  nothing,  —  then,  and  above 
all  else,  by  an  appeal  to  the  affections  of  the  child, 
and  to  his  moral  sentiments,  for  only  his  conscience 
can  inflict  punishments  which  are  really  salutary, 
remorse  and  repentance.  The  discipline  of  results 
has  this  merit,  that  it  is  in  no  way  capricious  like 
the  too  often  inconsistent  discipline  of  human  device, 
a  discipline  of  commands  and  counter-commands. 
It  never  threatens  in  vain;  its  control  is  mute  and 
inexorable.  In  consequence,  it  does  not  confuse  the 
child  by  a  number  of  contradictory  prescriptions. 
Lastly,  as  it  never  puts  the  child's  will  in  conflict 
with  that  of  its  parents,  it  can  avoid  one  of  the  dan- 
gers accompanying  education  in  general :  that  of  irri- 
tating children  against  their  parents,  who,  through 
constant  threats  and  scolding,  finally  end  by  mak- 
ing themselves  detested.  But,  two  things  should  be 
noted.  In  the  first  place,  Mr.  Spencer  is  himself 
obliged  to  have  recourse  to  parents  to  aid  Nature  hi 
punishing  the  child,  and  this  intervention  suffices  to 
bring  back  the  very  danger  which  we  were  anxious 
to  avoid.  And  secondly,  Mr.  Spencer  is  obliged  to 
put  Nature  aside,  and  himself  make  room  hi  his 


106  HERBERT  SPENCER 

system  for  paternal  approval  and  disapproval,  and 
admit  these  also  as  natural  reactions.  In  finely 
delineated  word-pictures  he  shows  us  a  son  saddened 
because  his  father  receives  him  coldly,  a  girl  wretched 
because  she  fears  that  she  has  lost  her  mother's 
friendship.  Here  we  are  back  again  in  realities. 
Only  we  may  be  allowed  to  question  whether  a  child, 
educated  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  method,  would 
be  inclined  to  trouble  himself  about  his  parents' 
dissatisfaction.  That  he  must  suffer  when  he  burns 
himself,  that  lies  in  the  nature  of  things,  since  his 
flesh  is  naturally  sensitive  to  pain;  but  for  him  to 
be  affected  by  the  reproaches  of  his  parents,  he  must 
have  learnt  to  love  them,  —  he  must  have  a  heart,  and 
Mr.  Spencer  seems  to  have  forgotten  to  give  him 
one.  What  moral  sensibility  can  we  expect  from 
a  poor  little  being  left,  without  defence,  without 
protection,  to  the  severities  of  Nature,  with  no  one 
to  console  it  in  its  sufferings,  to  speak  to  it  a  word  of 
affection  or  pity?  May  we  not  fear  that  such  a 
pupil  of  Nature,  one  who  has  never  felt  in  infancy 
the  sweet  influences  of  a  parent's  tenderness  and 
solicitude,  will  be  cold  and  unmoved  by  expressions 
of  their  displeasure? 


VI 

IT  is  time  to  draw  to  a  conclusion,  not  that  we 
may  insist  on  omissions  and  errors,  —  these  are  only 
too  clear  hi  the  essay  on  Education;  what  work, 
even  that  of  a  genius,  is  without  blemishes  ?  —  but 
rather  to  state  briefly  its  essential  merits. 

Omissions  and  errors  have  been  pointed  out  in 
passing;  some  others  should  yet  be  mentioned. 
First,  it  would  seem  that  Mr.  Spencer,  like  Locke, 
had  hi  mind  the  education  of  a  "gentleman,"  of  a 
boy  able  to  consecrate  to  study  the  long  years  of  his 
youth.  He  constructed  a  uniform  course  for  all, 
not  taking  into  account  different  grades  of  instruc- 
tion. Popular  education  is  not  directly  contem- 
plated; for,  in  the  present  state  of  society,  it  would 
be  chimerical  to  propose  for  a  child  of  the  poorer 
classes,  obliged  by  the  necessities  of  life  to  earn  his 
bread  early,  such  a  wide  course  of  studies,  and  of 
preparation  for  "complete  living."  Moreover,  this 
kind  of  aristocratic  education,  like  Rousseau's 
scheme,  may  be  suitable  for  'individual  education 
conducted  at  home,  but  not  for  collective  education 
conducted  in  common ;  for  the  discipline  of  natural  re- 

107 


108  HERBERT  SPENCER 

actions  would  be  plainly  inapplicable  in  a  school.  .  .  . 
But  without  further  critical  arguments,  let  us  ac- 
knowledge the  chief  error:  in  a  work  claiming  to 
be  new,  there  is  a  certain  lack  of  originality,  which 
is  concealed  by  a  brilliant  style  and  a  lively  imagina- 
tion in  details.  Mr.  Spencer  is  a  clever  stage  man- 
ager. Thanks  to  an  amazing  gift  of  expression,  he 
clothes  the  ideas  of  others  magnificently;  but  as  to 
education  it  is  possibly  just  to  say  that  the  book 
contains  very  few  really  new  ideas.  .  .  . 

Yet  we  cannot  but  admire  these  brilliant  pages, 
where  a  profound  and  humorous  thinker  has  defined 
with  extraordinary  distinctness,  and  animated  by 
a  breath  of  intense  life,  some  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  new  education.  If  he  restates 
theories  known  before,  it  is  in  order  to  develop  them 
broadly  and  forcibly;  also,  it  is  to  give  to  them  a 
personal  accent,  the  full  warmth  of  his  philosophic 
faith,  a  spirit  of  liberty,  a  sentiment  of  sweetness 
and  humanity,  and,  finally,  what  may  surprise  us,  a 
very  noble  religious  tone. 

No  one  has  stronger  claim  to  the  title  of  scientific 
and  philosophic  educationist.  Although  Mr.  Spencer 
appears  to  us  to  be  aiming  towards  professional  forms 
of  education,  he  is  not  a  man  of  science  in  any  special 
or  narrow  sense.  He  looks  eagerly  towards  an  m- 
clusive  science,  that  is  to  say,  to  a  philosophy  that 


HERBERT  SPENCER  109 

is  "unified  science."  Whatever  we  may  think  of 
the  soundness  of  his  hypotheses,  we  cannot  deny 
their  grandeur.  He  aimed  at  putting  into  our  hands 
one  of  Ariadne's  threads  to  guide  our  steps  through 
the  labyrinth  of  this  universe.  In  the  name  of  this 
wide  and  noble  philosophy  he  invites  us  to  a  higher 
and  more  modern  conception  of  education.  True 
education,  he  might  say,  can  be  given  only  by  phi- 
losophers. How  he  lifts  us  above  the  routine  and 
the  paltry  studies  which  tradition  has  perpetuated 
in  certain  spheres  of  instruction !  With  what  eager- 
ness he  shakes  off  worn-out  customs  and  prejudices ! 
How  roundly  he  scolds  masters  and  parents  who 
would  blush  and  think  themselves  slandered  if 
they  were  accused  of  not  knowing  the  legendary 
exploits  of  some  fabulous  demigod,  and  yet  who 
avow  without  embarrassment  that  they  know  noth- 
ing of  the  structure  of  the  human  body,  or  about 
breathing  and  digestion ;  who  teach  to  their  children 
the  history  of  the  tribes  of  Israel,  and  neglect  to 
teach  them  either  the  laws  of  the  physical  world  or 
the  principles  of  social  organization.  Under  the 
banner  of  Spencerian  pedagogy  will  be  henceforth 
enlisted  the  people  who  prefer,  at  the  risk  of  mis- 
application, the  substantial  nourishment  of  science 
to  the  trivialities  and  elegancies  of  verbal  instruc- 
tion; who  would  open  the  mind  to  the  real  world, 


110  HERBERT   SPENCER 

who  wish  to  form  positive  and  practical  men,  asso- 
ciated, nevertheless,  by  the  general  knowledge  they 
possess  to  the  universal  life  of  Nature  and  of  human 
societies.  Likewise,  we  must  reckon  amongst  Mr. 
Spencer's  disciples  all  those  who,  after  having  ac- 
cepted philosophy  as  the  supreme  end  of  education, 
recommend  it  also  as  means,  —  all  who  think  that 
good  educators  must  be  good  psychologists,  and 
that  psychology  decides  the  best  methods,  those 
which  require  the  best  workmen.  We  must  not 
forget  that,  unlike  Auguste  Comte,  Mr.  Spencer 
gives  psychology  a  place  in  his  catalogue  of  the 
sciences.  Like  Locke,  like  J.  S.  Mill,  like  Bain,  he 
belongs  to  that  English  school  of  philosophers  who 
have  done  more  to  assure  a  good  development  to 
pedagogical  theory  in  England  than  has  been  done 
in  any  other  country,  by  ascending  to  its  source, 
that  is  to  say,  to  psychological  studies.  "The 
sceptre  of  psychology,"  said  J.  S.  Mill,  "has  now 
returned  to  England;"  and  Th.  Ribot  added,  "It 
might  be  maintained  that  it  never  left  England." 
The  scientific  spirit  united  with  the  philosophic 
spirit  calls  for  the  spirit  of  freedom.  Mr.  Spencer 
is  a  great  liberal  and  a  determined  individualist. 
Socialists  have  quite  wrongly  claimed  to  enroll  him 
in  their  ranks.  It  would  have  been  a  very  fortunate 
thing  for  them  to  have  been  able  to  recommend 


HERBERT  SPENCER  111 

their  theories  by  the  great  intellectual  authority 
of  the  most  learned  of  English  sociologists.  The 
unfortunate  thing  is  that  this  so-called  socialist 
inclines  towards  a  somewhat  extreme  individualism. 
So  far  from  being  an  adherent  of  a  doctrine  which 
tends  to  put  humanity  under  the  yoke  of  a  new 
despotism,  he  aspires  to  a  government  of  absolute 
liberty.  Government,  in  his  opinion,  is  an  evil 
which  is  necessary  at  present,  but  an  evil  which  is 
diminishuig  with  the  progress  of  reason.  The  moral 
law  is  the  law  of  freedom  amongst  equals.  "A  day 
will  come  when  every  man  will  know  how  to  unite 
in  his  heart  an  active  love  of  freedom  for  himself 
with  an  active,  sympathetic  feeling  for  the  freedom 
of  others.  Then  the  limitations  of  individuality 
which  still  exist,  whether  caused  by  legal  fetters  or 
by  private  force,  will  be  finally  overthrown ;  no  one 
will  be  any  longer  hindered  in  the  development  of 
his  individuality,  for  each,  hi  maintaining  his  own 
rights,  will  respect  the  rights  of  others."  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  hi  these  prophecies  regarding 
society  the  least  trace  of  satisfaction  with  the  Utopias 
of  collectivists.  For  the  rest,  Mr.  Spencer  has  also 
clearly  explained  himself.  After  describing  the 
miserable  condition  of  certain  tribes  who  have  made 
an  attempt  at  communism,  —  the  Redskins  of  the 
Hudson  and  some  backward  tribes  of  Eastern 


112  HERBERT  SPENCER 

Europe, — he  draws  the  conclusion  that  "the  doc- 
trine of  socialism,  which  is  absurd  from  the  point 
of  view  of  psychology,  would  be  wicked  from  the 
biological  point  of  view";  it  would  bring  with  it  a 
rapid  decadence  and  dissolution  of  the  social  groups, 
who  were  captivated  by  the  notion  of  putting  it 
into  practice. 

Freedom,  the  end  of  social  progress,  —  for  the 
ideal  government  would  combine  the  least  authority 
with  the  greatest  amount  of  liberty,  —  freedom  is 
acquired  only  by  a  long  effort  of  Nature.  "It  is 
the  reward  of  constant  vigilance."  It  must  be  de- 
veloped in  the  scholar  as  well  as  in  the  adult  in  so 
far  as  this  is  possible,  and  respected  in  a  woman  as 
much  as  in  a  man.  In  the  delicate  question  of  the 
equality  of  the  sexes,  Mr.  Spencer  is  in  theory  some- 
what hostile  to  the  claims  of  women.  He,  in  fact, 
declares  that,  setting  aside  exceptional  cases,  the 
average  intellectual  force,  like  the  average  physical 
force,  is  lower  in  women  than  the  corresponding 
average  in  men.  But  in  practice  he  shows  himself 
more  favourable.  " Equity,"  he  says,  "  demands 
that  we  do  nothing  that  will  put  women  at  a  dis- 
advantage." We  must  grant  to  them  the  same 
freedom  as  to  men.  No  restriction  should  be  put 
upon  their  choice  of  a  profession.  The  only  thing 
that  should  be  refused  them  is  participation  in 


HERBERT  SPENCER  113 

political  rights.  For  this  Mr.  Spencer  gives  an  in- 
teresting reason,  that  on  the  day  when  women  are 
eligible  as  electors  like  men,  not  being  subject  to 
the  same  burdens,  —  for  instance,  to  the  obligation 
of  military  service,  —  they  will  be  placed  in  a  posi- 
tion, not  of  equality,  but  of  superiority;  and  he 
finally  refers  the  solution  of  the  question  to  an  epoch 
that,  alas,  is  very  far  in  the  distance,  when  the 
military  spirit  will  have  died  away,  and  universal 
peace  will  have  been  finally  established. 

According  to  these  principles,  education,  like  the 
social  life  for  which  it  prepares,  should  be  a  move- 
ment towards  freedom;  and,  in  consequence,  it 
should  be  guided  by  gentleness  and  kindness. 
Doubtless  Mr.  Spencer  might  be  reproached  for  the 
inhuman  hardness  of  some  of  his  conclusions.  In 
his  Introduction  to  Social  Science,  and  in  his  book, 
The  Individual  against  the  State,  he  renewed  certain 
of  Plato's  cruel  theories  by  excluding  from  his  Re- 
public defective  men.  He  abandons  the  infirm  and 
diseased  to  their  unhappy  fate,  letting  no  one  assist 
or  relieve  them.  He  reckons  acts  of  sentimental 
philanthropy  amongst  what  he  calls  "the  sins  of 
the  law-maker."  To  feed  the  incapables  at  the 
expense  of  the  capables  (he  said),  this  is  to  accu- 
mulate a  reserve  of  misery  for  posterity.  Here  the 
evolutionist  speaks,  —  the  machine  of  progress  must 


114  HERBERT  SPENCER 

go  forward  at  express  rate  at  the  risk  of  crushing 
beneath  its  wheels  all  who  stand  in  its  way.  But 
to  those  whom  he  admits  into  his  city,  Mr.  Spencer 
is,  on  the  contrary,  kind  and  good.  He  has  himself 
said  of  his  moral  system  that  "it  unites  gentleness 
with  inexorableness." 

As  he  upholds  an  education  that  is  attractive,  he 
advocates  a  morality  not  less  pleasing.  Asceticism 
inspires  him  with  antipathy.  He 'has  nothing  but 
disdain  for  those  severe  moralists  who  have  compro- 
mised the  success  of  their  precepts  by  expressing 
them  in  forms  which  excite  only  "repulsion."  What 
a  delightful  lesson  on  family  discipline  he  gives  in 
this  passage  from  the  Preface  to  his  Data  of  Ethics. 

If  a  father,  sternly  enforcing  numerous  commands, 
some  needful  and  some  needless,  adds  to  his  severe 
control  a  behaviour  wholly  unsympathetic;  if  his 
children  have  to  take  their  pleasures  by  stealth, 
or,  when  timidly  looking  up  from  their  play,  ever 
meet  a  cold  glance,  or  more  frequently  a  frown,  his 
government  will  inevitably  be  disliked,  if  not  hated, 
and  the  aim  will  be  to  evade  it  as  much  as  possible. 
Contrariwise,  a  father  who,  equally  firm  hi  main- 
taining restraints  needful  for  the  well-being  of  his 
children  or  the  well-being  of  other  persons,  not  only 
avoids  needless  restraints,  but,  giving  his  sanction 
to  all  legitimate  gratifications,  and  providing  the 


HERBERT  SPENCER  115 

means  for  them,  looks  on  at  their  gambols  with  an 
approving  smile,  can  scarcely  fail  to  gain  an  influ- 
ence which,  no  less  efficient  for  the  time  being,  will 
also  be  permanently  efficient.  The  controls  of  two 
such  fathers  symbolize  the  controls  of  morality  as 
it  is  and  morality  as  it  should  be. 

Mr.  Spencer,  like  Rousseau  and  Michelet,  would 
have  children  happy  and  education  a  delightful  task. 
Pie  has  contributed  to  restore  pleasure  to  the  school 
as  well  as  to  life.  He  considers  that  pleasant  sen- 
sations raise  the  level  of  existence,  that  suffering 
lowers  it.  He  eliminates,  as  far  as  possible,  oppres- 
sive restrictions  and  restraints  that  sadden,  or 
commands  that  exact  painful  efforts  from  children 
and  superhuman  renunciation  on  the  part  of  their 
parents.  On  the  contrary,  he  appeals  to  the  activi- 
ties, to  initiative,  to  personal  will,  to  all  that  emanci- 
pates, and  to  all  that  gives  joy. 

This  is  the  will  of  Nature,  not  the  blind  Nature 
of  the  Epicureans,  which  lets  things  move  according 
to  chance,  but  of  Nature  benevolent  and  orderly. 
Humanity,  like  the  universe,  has  its  aim,  and  it 
pursues  this  aim  ceaselessly,  through  vicissitudes 
and  fluctuations,  periods  of  arrest  and  of  recoil 
which  delay  progress,  but  which  do  not  jeopardize 
its  final  success.  And  if  Nature  is  kindly  and  sys- 
tematic, it  would  seem  that  this  must  be  by  the  will 


116  HERBERT  SPENCER 

of  the  unknown  mysterious  power  to  which  it  is 
obedient.  Although  Mr.  Spencer  removes  Provi- 
dence, the  Supreme  Being,  afar  off  into  the  regions 
of  the  unknowable,  he  invokes  its  power  at  each 
moment,  without,  for  the  rest,  explaining  how  he 
conceives  it  to  be  exerted.  He  would  say  that 
all  discipline  belonging  to  human  institutions  is 
bad,  and  will  fail  when  separated  from  the  natu- 
ral discipline  divinely  ordained.  He  protests  that 
science  in  its  boldest  conclusions  is  in  no  way  irre- 
ligious or  impious.  Science  is  hostile  to  the  super- 
stitions which  dress  themselves  in  the  name  of 
religion,  but  it  is  not  the  enemy  of  the  essential  re- 
ligious spirit  which  the  religions  hide  and  disfigure. 
Science  is  " proud"  in  the  presence  of  traditions  and 
legends;  but  it  is  " humble "  before  the  impenetra- 
ble veil  which  hides  the  Absolute  from  the  eyes  of 
mankind. 

Religious  expressions  abound  in  the  writings  of 
the  evolutionist  philosopher.  He  criticises  severely 
scholars  who  are  interested  in  the  amorous  intrigues 
of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  or  who  comment  learnedly 
on  Greek  odes,  but  who  disdain  the  knowledge  of 
the  structure  of  the  skies,  and  who  give  not  a  glance 
at  "the  great  epic  poem  written  by  the  finger  of 
God  on  the  strata  of  the  globe."  He  even  goes  so 
far  as  to  claim  that  the  scientist  alone  is  the  really 


HERBERT  SPENCER  117 

religious  man.  Only  the  sincere  man  of  science 
can  truly  know  how  utterly  beyond  all,  —  not  only 
human  knowledge,  but  human  conception,  is  the 
Universal  Power,  of  whom  Nature  and  Life  and 
Thought  are  manifestations. 

These  are  not  empty  declarations,  precautions 
dictated,  like  those  of  Descartes,  by  prudence,  pro- 
ceeding from  a  philosopher  who  is  afraid  of  embroil- 
ing himself  with  spiritual  or  temporal  pows^sr  The 
doctrine  of  Evolution  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Spencer, 
as  in  that  of  Darwin,  does  not  exclude  the  idea  of 
a  Deity  who^although  inconceivable,  does  not  the 
less  demand  recognition  as  a  necessary  hypothesis, 
seeing  that  human  thought  meets,  underlying  all 
things,  an  impenetrable  mystery.  It  is  a  Deity 
who  recalls  the  God  of  Aristotle,  a  God  not  known 
to  a,  world  which  he  knows  not,  but  who  is,  never- 
theless, the  final  cause  of  the  world;  and  towards 
Him  the  world  is  eternally  aspiring,  guided  and 
urged  on  by  irresistible,  attractive  force.  . 

Let  us  add,  lastly,  that  this  mysterious  Deity  is 
He  who  inspires  in  man  the  religion  of  love,  as 
opposed  to  the  religion  of  hate.  The  latter  is  per- 
sistently taught  by  our  masters  every  day  of  the 
_  week,  by  making  children  study  Greek  and  Roman 
epics  —  Mr.  Spencer  certainly  does  not  like  the 
classics;  the  former  is  taught  one  day  in  the  week, 


118  HERBERT   SPENCER 

Sunday,  through  the  reading  of  the  New  Testament. 
But  this  matters  little,  for  the  religion  of  love  is 
slowly  spreading  and  permeating  men's  hearts  as 
civilization  advances.  It  will  in  the  end  triumph, 
and  after  boundless  progress  it  will  reign  on  the 
earth  in  a  golden  age;  then  will  come  the  end  of 
all  misery,  the  death  of  all  hatred,  eternal  happiness. 


(  UNIVERSITY    ) 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

SPENCER,  Education,  Moral  and  Physical.  First  English 
edition,  1861. 

SPENCER,  see  among  other  writings:  Introduction  to  Social 
Science;  chapters  hi  Discipline  on  "Progress,"  "The  Useful 
and  the  Beautiful,"  etc. ;  chapters  hi  Problems  of  Morals  and  of 
Sociology,  on  "Freedom  and  Servitude,"  "Americans,"  "Kant," 
etc. 

First  Principles. 

Data  of  Ethics. 

The  Individual  vs.  the  State. 

R.  HEBERT  QUICK,  Essays  on  Educational  Reformers,  1868. 

W.  H.  PAYNE,  Contributions  (o  the  Science  of  Education,  New 
York,  1886. 

CHAUMEIL,  Manuel  de  pedagogic  psychologique,  Paris,  1885. 

M.  VESSIOT,  De  V education,  Paris,  1885. 

M.  GREARD,  Education  et  Instruction,  t.  II;  L 'esprit  de  dis- 
cipline, Paris,  1887. 

GUYAU,  La  morale  anglaise  contemporaine,  Paris,  1879. 

GUYAU,  Education  et  heredite,  Paris,  1889. 

DEMOGEOT  ET  MONTUCCI,  De  I'enseignement  secondaire  en 
Angkterre,  Paris,  1868. 

M.  FOUILLEE,  L'enseignement  an  point  de  vue  national,  Paris, 
1B91. 

M.  THAMIN,  Education  et  positivisme,  Paris,  1892. 

M^  A.  BERTRAND,  L'enseignement  integral,  Paris,  1898. 

M.  J.  HALLEUX,  L'evolutionnisme  en  morale,  study  of  the 
philosophy  of  Herbert  Spencer,  Paris,  1901. 

119 


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